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Written by To The Point News
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Monday, 12 February 2007 |
There is an old district of Moscow called Lefortovo along the Yauza River, named after a Swiss advisor to Peter The Great (1672-1725), Franz Lefort. It's infamous for the KGB's Lefortovo Prison, where the Russian secret police taught their protégé, Saddam Hussein, how to deal with political prisoners.
Inside the prison was a huge meat grinder in which the prisoners were tossed (sometimes alive), ground to a pulp, then sluiced into the Moscow sewers.
Nowadays, the district is infamous for the Lefortovo Tunnel which runs underneath it. As part of Moscow's Third Ring Road, the two mile-long tunnel cuts at least a half-hour driving time across the city.
Running underneath and along the Yauza River, with water leaks, the tunnel's road surface can become a ribbon of black ice in the freezing Moscow winter. Thus it has been named the "Tunnel of Death" by Moscow residents.
Here is a video recorded by one of the tunnel's monitoring cameras of incidents during one single day last winter. Note the heroic efforts of the accordion bus driver who was able to avert disaster. The others weren't so lucky. This is what's it's like to drive in Moscow now.
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