Human rights activist: "secret alliance" between FSB and Islamic terrorists

In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Norwegian human rights activist Ivar Amundsen has, citing unnamed "experts," accused the Kremlin of backing the "armed groups of Islamic fundamentalists" who are currently destabilizing Chechnya.

Natalya Golitsyna: Do you share Akhmed Zakaev’s opinion voiced recently at the ‘Caucasus seminar’ in London that ‘Russia has a vested interest in the instability in the Caucasus’?

Ivar Amundsen: Yes, I do. I think that this constitutes part of its policy in the Caucasus. [...] There is another striking fact. There is an odd and secret alliance (a conspiracy even) between the FSB and the armed groups of Islamic fundamentalists hiding in the Chechen forests. Their leader Doku Umarov has proclaimed the setting of a new Islamic state – an independent Caucasus Emirate. According to experts, this move which could destabilize the situation in the Caucasus is being overseen by the FSB – in order to hamper as much as possible any solution to the Caucasus dilemma.

(HT: David McDuff.)

This isn't by any means the first report of false flag attacks in Russia being supported by the FSB. I've written earlier about suspected FSB involvement in Beslan, Ingushetia and Ossetia, and among neo-Nazis in Russia. And then there are the two biggies – the 1999 apartment bombings and the Nord-Ost hostage crisis.