Russian diplomatic shooting mystery

Russian diplomatic shooting mystery

By Stephen Mulvey
BBC News Online

A bullet penetrated the windscreen of the ambassador's Mercedes

The Russian media is alive with conspiracy theories to explain the attack on Sunday on a convoy of Russian diplomats leaving Baghdad.

Five embassy staff including the ambassador, Vladimir Titorenko, were injured in the incident, one of them seriously.

The US has said it is investigating how the diplomats came under fire on the edge of the city, with officials claiming the convoy deviated from an agreed route.

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily said on Wednesday that the diplomats may have been attempting to spirit Saddam Hussein's secret archives out of the city.

Another journalist has suggested that they were smuggling to Moscow secret US military equipment seized in Iraq.

There have also been reports alleging that the embassy angered the US by using jamming equipment that deflected smart weapons from their targets.

Iraqi vehicles

Mr Titorenko has been quoted as saying that US forces deliberately opened fire on the convoy, headed by his Mercedes, which was flying a small Russian flag on its bonnet.

Ahead of our convey were two Iraqi vehicles, which suffered most of all - there were dead and wounded

Alexander Minakov on Russian television

But more details about the attack have been coming from journalists accompanying the diplomats, who arrived back in Moscow on Monday evening.

Television reporter Alexander Minakov speculated that US forces may have been suspicious because two Iraqi vehicles were travelling ahead of the Russian cars.

The journalists to the rear of the convoy were also travelling in four-wheel-drive vehicles, of a kind sometimes used by Iraqi fighters.

Minakov said the shots were aimed carefully at the convoy, and were not merely crossfire, as his first reports on the incident suggested.

The US has not accepted that its forces fired on the convoy, although it has described the incident as "regrettable".

Bullets extracted from the stomach of a Russian driver, and from the ambassador's car, have been described by Russian journalists as the kind fired by M16 rifles issued to US marines.

Dangerous game

The theory that Russian agents may have gone to Baghdad to safeguard secret service archives was first aired in Nezavisimaya Gazeta last month.

One was taking out classified Iraqi archives, and the other was trying to hinder it by force

Nezavisimaya Gazeta

On Wednesday it said the attack on the diplomats was the result of a "dangerous game" played between Russian agents and the CIA.

"One was taking out classified Iraqi archives, and the other was trying to hinder it by force," the paper said.

It said an unmanned predator drone had followed the diplomatic convoy from the moment it started, and that US troops had made several attempts to stop it and check its cargo.

It added that the firing on the convoy was designed to stop the cars, without killing their occupants.

Russian intelligence sources replied that the idea was "groundless fantasy... plucked from the air".

Route confusion

The Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday that the US was angry with the Russians for using jamming equipment, and that Secretary of State Colin Powell personally called the ambassador to urge him to leave Baghdad.

It looks like it was a trap set by the Iraqis

Anonymous US official quoted by AFP

This was denied by the Russian Defence Ministry.

The idea that the convoy was carrying secret US weaponry has been put forward by Russian military journalist Vladislav Shurygin.

US officials have also put forward a conspiracy theory, suggesting that Iraqi officials led the Russians into a "trap" by persuading them to alter their route.

While Mr Titorenko has said there was no deviation from the agreed path out of Baghdad, another Russian journalist, Andrei Murtazin, said the convoy had taken advice from Iraqis to make some changes.

US officials initially said their forces were not in the area where the attacks took place, but the AFP news agency later reported that this was based on a confusion.

It quoted a Washington source as saying that there were no US units along the route the convoy should have taken, but that there were on the route it actually took.

Mr Titorenko's injured driver was left at a hospital in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, on Monday after being operated on by Iraqi doctors.

The ambassador went back to fetch him on Tuesday, arriving in Damascus early on Wednesday.