Standing Well Back
1880-1890

The Tsar and the suicide bomber

I have been promising for some time a blog post about the 1881 assassination of the Tsar by suicide bomber in St Petersburg, the site of which I visited a few month ago.  I think that this incident is particularly interesting for the following reasons:

  1. It was a suicide bombing by any definition and thus invites comparisons with modern suicide terrorism
  2. It seems to have sparked and inspired the revolutionaries of the time, demonstrating what was possible – for the next 25 years revolutionaries around the world sought to repeat the impact of the incident
  3. The design was enabled by the development of dynamite in the late 1860s and it would appear by Russian military experience of fusing from the sea mines I discussed last week

The late 1870s and early 1880s were politically a time of great drama. In Russia Anarchists and Nihilists were active and some sought the use of violence to achieve their goals in the light of poor harvests and industrial recession.  The Nihilists objected to the status quo of the ruling class and the capitalist control of the economy and in that at least there are some very modern echoes. One particular group, the Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will) decided to target the Tsar.  One of this group’s early attempts to assassinate the Tsar was in Moscow in 1879  – the terrorists dug a tunnel from a house and planted three large command initiated IEDs under the railway on a track (by digging a tunnel under a road from a nearby house) that the Tsar was predicted to use. The attack failed as did an attempt a year later when explosives were planted in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg by an employee Stephan Khalturin who was able smuggle the explosives in bit by bit. The picture below shoes the aftermath.

 

I can’t find details of the construct of this device but I believe it was a timed IED. The Tsar delayed a reception dinner thus missing the explosion, but many people were killed or badly wounded in the incident. Amongst the dead were all the members of the Finnish Guard in a room below the intended victims.

In an early example of an “attack the Network” C-IED effort the Russian secret police, the Okrhana, was established in the light of the failed bomb attacks (along with the rise of left wing revolutionary groups) and they were the archetypal “secret police”, running double agents, agents provocateurs, surveillance and interception of communications. They also operated internationally.

On the 13 March the Tsar once again overruled the advice of his security staff and took his carriage on a well known and predictable route through St Petersburg from Michaelovsky Palace to the Winter Palace. Once again this is a story of terrorists exploiting the known and predictable routes of their target. An armed Cossack sat with the coach-driver and another six Cossacks followed on horseback. Behind them came a group of police officers in sledges.

All along the route he was watched by members of Narodnaya Volya, who had carefully planned a triple IED attack. On a street corner near the Catherine Canal a woman terrorist gave the signal to two of the conspirators to throw their bombs at the Tsar’s carriage. The bombs missed the carriage and instead landed amongst the Cossacks. The Tsar was unhurt but insisted on getting out of the carriage to check the condition of the injured men. While he was standing with the wounded Cossacks another terrorist, Elnikoff, stepped forward with a shout and threw his bomb on the ground between himself and the Tsar.

Alexander was mortally wounded and the explosion was so great that Elnikoff also died from the bomb blast.  The device used is quite interesting – he is a contemporary description and an image.

 

 The infernal machine used by Elnikoff was about 7 1/2, inches in height. Metal tubes (bb) filled with chlorate of potash, and enclosing glass tubes (cc) filled with sulphuric acid (commonly called oil of vitriol), intersect the cylinder. Around the glass tubes are rings of iron (dd) closely attached as weights. The construction is such that, no matter how the bomb falls, one of the glass tubes is sure to break. The chlorate of potash in that case, combining with the sulphuric acid, ignites at once, and the flames communicate over the fuse (ff) with the piston (c), filled with fulminate of silver. The concussion thus caused explodes the dynamite or “black jelly” (a) with which the cylinder is closely packed.

You will note some similarities, in principle, with parts of the initiating system from the Russian sea mines of the Crimean war that I posted last week.

In all, I think that this terrorist attack is one of the most significant in history – the first “suicide bombing” to gain international attention, and certainly an attack that inspired revolutionaries the world over.  My friend Greg Woolgar, who is about to publish a much needed book on the Victorian Bomb disposal expert and first proponent of IED exploitation and technical intelligence, Colonel Majendie, tells me that the good colonel visited St Petersburg in the aftermath to seek intelligence on the device.

Suicide IEDs

Right out of a spy movie

Here’s an interesting story   that by and large hasn’t been picked up by the media.  After a small explosion in a Copenhagen hotel lavatory last week, a man was subsequently arrested in a local park where he ran after the explosion.  The man was wearing, according to some reports, a suicide vest or some package tied around his waist. Police removed that from him with a remote cutting tool on a robot.  The man was isolated on the ground in the park for about 5 hours as the EOD operation proceeded. The man is keeping shtum and keeping his mouth zipped.  But he appears to have a number of false identity papers from a number of European countries.  What’s also interesting is that the man has a prosthetic leg (below the knee) and even the serial number for that has been removed presumably to prevent tracing its source.  Reminds me of the film “The Fugitive” where the bad guy had a prosthetic arm.

So, what to think…? In typical modern European political correctness the police are not implying or hinting anything specific… but here’s my thoughts:

1.  Only a terrorist would wear an explosive suicide vest. So he’s a terrorist and not some sort of spook.  Suicide belts are used by extremist Islamic terrorists or Tamil terrorists, by and large, so the chances are he’s an extremist Islamic suicide bomber, in my humble opinion. A pistol was also recovered from the scene of the explosion, dropped when the accidental explosion occurred. It’s unlikely the pistol was brought into the country by air, so the man came in by land or was armed with the pistol by locals.

2. He looks European or perhaps North African. But could be middle eastern.

3. There’s an odd mix of professionalism and the usual amateur aspects here. The false papers and the ability to keep shtum, and the removal of serial numbers from his prosthetic leg indicates a degree of professionalism not always seen from Al Qaida suicide bombers.  But the guy did cause a small explosion in a hotel toilet (shades of Ramzi Yousef there) and did get captured later.

4. The loss of a leg is intriguing. A significant number of “Afghan veterans” from the bad guys side have such injuries from Russian anti personnel mines in the 80s.  So too have some Algerian bad guys.

5. Some reports suggest the man had false papers from a number of countries including Luxembourg, and others report he had a false Belgian passport. The latter is interesting since Al Qaida are known to have obtained Belgian passports. The two Al Qaida suicide bombers who killed Commander Massoud in Afghanistan in 2001 had false Belgian passports as have other arrested Al Qaida operatives. The man arrested had bought a bus ticket to Brussels.

6. Some press reports cite sources close to the investigation, that among the man’s possessions was a map with a ring around the main office of Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Århus, Denmark  The newspaper is infamous for the publication of the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

7. To me, the explosion sounds like an improvised detonator exploded, he dropped the pistol and ran. Some reports suggest he injured his face and arm in the explosion.  I think there’s a good chance he may have been preparing the device.  But if so that doesn’t fit with the purchase of a bus ticket.

8. The explosion occurred the day before the anniversary of 9/11.  Al Qaida occasionally have tried to mark anniversaries.

9. The suspect speaks French, German and English. An interesting mix and perhaps indicative of a European upbringing or residence.

10. Some reports suggest he is in his twenties, others that he is “about 40”

11. He had stayed 2 nights in the hotel but had checked out of his room the morning of the explosion. The explosion occurred in the publicly available lavatories in the hotel.

12.  Its not beyond the bounds of possibility that the main intent might have been assassination by pistol, with the bomb as a “just in case” he was captured. Such tactics have been seen in Afghanistan.  But with the initiator having prematurely exploded he had no means to detonate the device when captured in the nearby park.

Lets see what develops…

 

Update on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:54PM by Roger Davies

More details are trickling out. Here’s a mug shot of the man showing injuries, which I think are consistent with an improvised detonator going off.

What is perhaps interesting is that in the first picture, taken from a CCTV camera the day before the incident the suspect had a goatee beard. On the day of the incident he had shaved it off. In some Al Qaida suicide bombing incidents the terrorists have also shaved their beards.

And for interest, here’s a picture of the prosthetic leg. don’t giggle, this is serious… It appears to be a high quality European prosthetic leg.  It intrigues me that the suspect appeared in court without his leg and on crutches…. Now that’s interesting. If all it was was a prosthetic leg why wouldn’t they let him keep it?  Perhaps there is a hint that it was used to maybe smuggle components and removed as “evidence”?

Update on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 7:19PM by Roger Davies

Latest news is that Copenhagen Police believe the man is a 24 year old Chechen boxer, resident in Belgium called Lors Doukaev. And there was me thinking hmm, his nose looks like a boxer’s nose…. but I didn’t mention it….

 

2000-2010

Black Widows

The double suicide bomb attack on the Moscow underground has once again brought out the media demon of the Chechen black widows. A significant proportion of attacks in Moscow and elsewhere over the past ten years or so have been committed by women suicide bombers and the Russian media (being the same as media everywhere) latch on to simple ideas that grab the imagination and pump the story in the usual and perhaps to a degree understandable frenzy. The latest stores spread a fear that there are a group of 21 other suicidal females all trained to carry out their mission. This keeps the media pot boiling… for all the usual positive and negative reasons and intentions. All I’d say is that previous attacks often resulted in the similar concept – that there are groups of trained and ruthless females out there, in every alley and dark corner willing to die for Allah in retaliation for the deaths of their husbands.

Some of you will have heard my analysis of the “black widow attack” that failed to kill the suicide bomber but killed bomb disposal expert Georgy Trofimov in 2004.

For what its worth, there were a few interesting aspects to this latest attack. The first I won’t talk about on the blog but happy to exchange on a one to one basis with trusted contacts – and that’s the position of the devices. Very significant and I don’t mean in relation to the FSB headquarters. Ping me if you want to discuss.

Secondly was the fact that after the first device went off it would appear that there was a conscious operational decision taken to keep the metro system running. And an hour later the second device exploded. Ouch. Most metro systems would have been shut down and evacuated at least for a time. We can’t second guess that decision without the facts ands circumstances known at the time by the Russian metro official who made the call… but maybe that’s interesting. It relates to the intent I perceive and which, in general, I agree with, to keep normal life functioning as long as possible – and it also relates to my third point that within a few hours the damaged train had been removed and the stations opened for normal commuter traffic. It’s the old principle, so often forgotten, of returning the situation to normality as soon as possible. The reason being is that a major part of the terrorist intent (which is the disruption) can be defeated in this way. Now that was remarkable -with passengers stood on station platforms looking across the rails to the shrapnel damaged wall on the far side within 3 or 4 hours. Bodies cleared, train towed, forensics gathered, platform swept, trains running , passengers on-board. I don’t know of any other country which would implement such a policy, and I think it’s the right one./

Too often the forensic investigation causes days or weeks of delays… Primacy is given to the scenes of crime investigator without the real authorities saying “Hang on a second,…. Does this make sense?” No-one more than me wants to gather forensic evidence to chase the perpetrators to ground…. So that needs a highly professional speedy response to gather as much as forensic data as possible then…. Someone has to have the cojones to say, “OK, enough” and get the trains running again and return the situation to normality – otherwise the terrorist continues to win. It’s a difficult decision but one I have personal experience of and one I feel strongly about. You can’t leave this decision to a forensic investigator – it should be a senior police commander or political decision and it needs a strategic view. Not everyone will agree with me, some see that the disruption is a price worth paying. I think there is a balance to be had and spending a week picking up the pieces, albeit a mass murder scene, is the wrong balance. Tough decision to make but I sense at the moment it’s a decision avoided rather than an involved strategic plan.

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