TERRORISM Report: Chechens bribed airline worker

The airline employee and an intermediary have been arrested.
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian authorities believe that two Chechen women suspected of blowing up Russian passenger jets last month got on the planes by paying bribes, media reports said.
Both were detained and handed over to a police officer, who let them go, the Interfax news agency quoted Russia's Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov as saying. The women had arrived at the airport the evening of Aug. 24, accompanied by two other Chechens, Ustinov told Interfax.
"Police officers spotted them, confiscated their passports and handed them over to a police captain responsible for anti-terrorism operations to examine their belongings," he was quoted as saying in the Wednesday report. "The captain let them go without any check, and they started to try to obtain tickets in the same buildings."
It is not unusual for Chechens to be stopped by police in Moscow for questioning.
Bribes
One of the alleged suicide bombers used an intermediary to pay $34 to a Sibir airlines employee to board a jet, even though she had a ticket for a flight the next day, Interfax quoted Ustinov as saying. She got on the plane two minutes before check-in closed, he said.
The same intermediary also took a bribe from the other alleged suicide bomber to get on a Volga-Aviaexpress flight, he said.
Ustinov said both the intermediary and the Sibir airline employee have been arrested.
The two planes crashed almost simultaneously on the night of Aug. 24 after taking off from Moscow's Domodyedovo airport, killing 90 people.
Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said laboratory tests of the wreckage of the Sibir Tu-154 and the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 confirmed the explosions that brought down the two planes both occurred in passenger cabins, reinforcing the suspicion that the two Chechen women were suicide bombers.
He said explosive residue and information from the planes' flight data recorders pointed to an explosion in the main cabin.