Helena Merriman

The only thing people really know about him is that he was recently head of the FSB, which is Russia's Internal Security Service, formerly the KGB.

And he gives a speech, a very powerful speech, where he says he's going to go after the rabid animals that did this and wipe them out.

So reporters at the time say this went down really well.

People wanted to hear this strong talk, vengeful talk.

They wanted a sense that here was someone taking this seriously, especially when just a few days later, on the 16th of September, there's a fourth bomb.

And this is in a town called Volgodonsk.

So by this point, you now have four apartment buildings blown up, around 300 people killed.

And people are terrified at this point.

And then this is where the story takes a very strange turn.

And in fact, I think of all the things that happen in the story of the apartment bombs, this is probably the most contested part of it.

So it all happens in a city called Ryazan, which is about 100 kilometres south of Moscow.

And this is now about a week after the fourth bomb.

And at this point, everywhere in Russia, you have people patrolling apartment buildings, looking out on the streets because everyone's terrified that maybe their apartment will be next.

And at around 9.30 in the evening, a man called Alexei spots this white Lada car.

It's parked outside his apartment.

But he notices something strange about it, which is that part of the license plate has been covered up with a piece of paper.

So he calls the police.

They come.

They go into the basement and they rush out and they say there's a bomb in the building.

The whole building's then evacuated, you know, babies taken from bathtubs, people are racing outside in their pyjamas and their dressing gowns.