"Siberia" Airline is made respondent on Tu-154 terror act

The court of the city of Ob, Novosibirsk Region, has recognized the "Siberia" Airline and insurers the Open Insurance Joint-Stock Company "Ingosstrakh" and the Open Joint-Stock Company "Afes" to be respondents to the claim of the family that had lost the breadwinner in the accident of Tu-154 airplane belonging to the "Siberia" Airline, which took place in August 2004 in the Rostov Region.

The "Interfax" reports that by ruling this way the Judge has rejected the petitions lodged by representatives of "Siberia" and "Ingosstrakh" asking to change the respondent. We remind you that Alexander Glushanin, representative of the "Siberia" Airline, had justified his petition by the fact that "as of the moment of terror act, the Airline had lost control of the aircraft, and the harm was caused to the claimants not by a source of increased danger, i.e., by the aircraft, but directly by the terror act committed onboard."

"While the court has already recognized the guilt of the employee of the "Siberia" Airline who had admitted two shahid-women aboard the craft for a bribe, why does the Airline refuse to bear responsibility under the claim?" asks Victor Makoveev who represents the claimants.

Earlier, Mr Makoveev has stated that if his clients win the process, he will strive for recall of the license from the "Siberia" Airline.

We remind you that earlier the court had united the claims of a victim's widow Alevtina Basyuk and children of Yulia Malykhina from Norilsk, as well as the one of Dmitri Basyuk who lives in Krasnoyarsk, into one suit. The total sum of the claim has made 76,590,000 roubles.

The "Caucasian Knot" has informed that on August 24, 2004, an aircraft Tu-154 of the "Siberia" Airline, which was flying from Moscow to Sochi, crashed near the Glubokiy settlement of the Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy District, Rostov Region, at 10:56 p.m. Moscow time. 38 passengers and 8 crew members perished onboard. One minute later an aircraft Tu-134 of the "Volga-Aviaexpress" Airline that made a flight Moscow-Volgograd crashed in the Tula Region. 35 passengers and 9 crew members perished in the accident.

Under the versions of the General Prosecutor's Office, the aircrafts were exploded by natives of Chechnya Amanat Nagieva and Satsita Dzhebirkhanova who had been recruited by Chechen separatists and equipped with bombs. At the same time, nobody has officially confirmed so far that the bombs were blown up by the women (the simultaneity of explosions, as the experts believed, can indicate that the bombs had timers, and this rejects the version of suicide bombers). The investigation also assumed that the terror had been organized by Shamil Basaev and Achemez Gochiyaev, organizer of explosions of apartment houses in Moscow in autumn of 1999.