Helena Merriman

But right from the start, things are very hard for them.

So one of the people on this commission, a lawyer called Mikhail Trapashkin, within just a few days of him agreeing to be on this commission, his house is raided.

There's another member of the commission, Sergei Yushchenkov.

He's the vice chair.

This is a year after they've begun their work.

He's coming home one day and he's shot to death in front of his apartment in Moscow.

His wife finds his body lying in the street.

And just a few months later, another member of the commission starts feeling unwell.

He goes to hospital.

His internal organs shut down.

His skin peels off.

It takes about 16 days for him to die.

Doctors at the time say he just had an allergic reaction to something, but journalists at the time said they're sure that he was poisoned.

So you have these very mysterious deaths that eventually result in that commission falling apart.

Yeah.

So then at the same time, you have the government's inquiry and very little is known about that.

And we've done a lot of digging to try and find out snippets of what went on.

But even journalists at the time said it was really hard to get a grip on it because so much happened behind closed doors.

I mean, just to give you an example of how...

The government's response to the bombs differed from the way other governments have looked at terror attacks.