Russia’s FSB security service has said that four people arrested Sunday in a foiled "terror" plot had provided money and arms for the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall last month.
More than 140 people were killed when button men stormed the Crocus City Hall venue on March 22 before setting the building on fire in the most fatal attack in Russia for two decades.
The FSB said in a statement on Monday that it had arrested a group of four a day earlier in the southern Dagestan
...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus
republiccurrently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca...
region who "were directly involved in the financing and supply of terrorist means to the perpetrators of the terrorist act carried out on 22 March in the Crocus City Hall in Moscow."
On Sunday, Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said it had apprehended three people who were "planning to commit a series of terrorist crimes."
The FSB said Monday that four foreign citizens had been arrested in the operation in the regional capital Makhachkala and the nearby town of Kaspiysk.
The Interfax news agency cited an FSB video showing one of the detained men saying: "I took weapons to them, these guys who attacked Crocus City Hall. I took them weapons from Makhachkala."
Russian authorities had previously announced the arrests of 12 people they say are connected to the attack — including the four suspected button men, who have been identified as Tajik citizens.
The Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said separately on Monday that it was formally charging another suspect with carrying out a "terrorist attack." It said it would ask a judge to send him to pre-trial detention.
"At the moment, the investigation has charged 10 defendants," it said in a statement.
The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(IS) has grabbed credit for the massacre, the most deadly it says it has ever carried out on European soil, though Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
has talked up a Ukrainian and Western connection.
Related:
Crocus City Hall: 2024-04-01 Foreign Ministry: Russia conveyed anti-terrorism demands to Ukraine through Minsk
Crocus City Hall: 2024-04-01 Terrorists in Dagestan were identified, security was strengthened after Crocus
Crocus City Hall: 2024-03-31 A symphony orchestra concert is taking place at Crocus in memory of the victims
Crocus City Hall: 2024-04-01 Foreign Ministry: Russia conveyed anti-terrorism demands to Ukraine through Minsk
Crocus City Hall: 2024-04-01 Terrorists in Dagestan were identified, security was strengthened after Crocus
Crocus City Hall: 2024-03-31 A symphony orchestra concert is taking place at Crocus in memory of the victims