When Russian President Vladimir Putin called George W. Bush on September11, 2001, to express sympathy for the World Trade Center attacks, the mysterious explosions of apartment houses in Russian cities two years earlier were cited as Russia's September 11. The blasts that had left nearly 300 people dead and scores wounded were blamed on Chechen separatists and had served as the pretext for Russia starting a new war in Chechnya in September 1999.

The house at 19 Gyryanova St. in Moscow, which exploded in the middle of the night of September 9, 1999 was the home of the Morozov sisters, the protagonists of Disbelief.

Who Did It: the Official Version

Over the years, the official investigation of the bombings conducted by the Russian security service, the FSB, has named several suspects linked to Chechnya. One of them, who appears in Disbelief, was arrested immediately after the attacks and was tortured into signing a confession, only to be released when the case against him fell apart. In 2001, three other people confessed to the bombings. They were convicted on other counts of terrorism but were cleared of all charges related to the Moscow attacks for lack of evidence.

Who Did It: The Other Theory

In November 2003, two men were tried in Moscow at a courthouse closed to the press and the public. They were accused of transporting explosives for the bombings. Reportedly, both of them retracted the confessions they had made while in FSB custody.

The prime suspect, according to the FSB, is a mysterious man named Achemez Gochiyaev who has never been captured.

From the moment of the first blast, a theory began to circulate in Moscow that it was not the Chechens, but the Russian secret service (the FSB) that planted the bombs to help the hawkish Vladimir Putin, then Prime Minister, win presidential elections.

Far from being a fringe conspiracy theory, these allegations are taken seriously by 43% of Russians and by many in the West. "Questions about those attacks, like Russia's conduct in Chechnya, continue to follow Mr. Putin like a shadow," wrote the Wall Street Journal in an editorial comment. In a statement in the U.S. Congress, Senator John McCain cited "credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these attacks".

The Inquiry, the Crackdown and the Coverup

The FSB theory of the bombings was initially probed by the independent Russian network NTV, which aired its famous investigative report on the eve of the presidential elections in March 2000. The central episode in that program - reproduced in Disbelief - was a bizzare incident on September 23, 1999 (a fortnight after the Gurianova St. explosion), when the local police in the city of Ryazan dismantled a bomb and arrested suspects in planting it, who unexpectedly turned out to be undercover agents of the FSB. The government quickly defused the scandal calling the incident an "ill-conceived readiness exercise".

After Putin's victory, NTV was taken over by the government. Its owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, fled abroad. A documentary based on the NTV report was produced by Boris Berezovsky, another exiled media baron. His TV station has been closed down. In fact, the overall crackdown on independednt media and its owners - "the oligarchs" - under Putin can be traced to that report on NTV.

Attempts to conduct a parliamentary investigation of the alleged FSB conspiracy were voted down in the Duma by the majority loyal to president Putin. The two liberal deputies, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Schekochikhin, who had tabled those motions were assassinated.

A Moscow lawyer, Mikhail Trepashkin, investigating the bombings on behalf of the victims' families was jailed on a fabricated charge after being interviewed for Disbelief.

All materials related to the bombings have been classified "top secret".