The four suspects of having committed the bloody attack on the Crocus concert hall on Friday, on the outskirts of Moscow, have appeared in court for the first time with evident signs of violence. The alleged perpetrators of one of the largest massacres perpetrated in Russia in the last two decades were brought to the disposal of the Moscow Basmanni district court this Sunday night. The attackers, charged with terrorism, who could be sentenced to life imprisonment, will remain in preventive detention for the moment. Most of the session took place behind closed doors, according to Russian authorities, to avoid divulging details that would affect the families of the victims.
The Russian authorities have not confirmed the possible link of the detainees with the Islamic State, an Islamist terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for the attack and has published a video recorded by the attackers themselves – with their faces blurred – in the leisure center during their slaughter. At least 137 people were killed and more than 140 were injured in the attack.
The Kremlin has also ruled out Western collaboration in the investigation. “Our services operate independently. There is no talk here about help from other (States),” President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, told the Tass agency.
For his part, the vice president of the Security Council and former Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, has promised on his Telegram channel that the perpetrators of the attack will be executed. “Is it necessary to kill them? It is necessary and so it will be. But it is also very important to kill all participants. To all. To those who financed them, to those who showed solidarity, to those who helped them. Kill them all,” said Medvedev, a member of Putin's closest circle.
Although the Russian authorities have linked the assailants to Ukraine, the only confirmed information so far is that the detainees, all of Tajik nationality, lived in Russia. The alleged attackers appeared before the judge one by one and with clear signs of violence. The defendants were supported by interpreters because two of them did not speak Russian.
The last of the four attackers to be brought to court, identified as Muhammadsobir Fayzov, brought to court in a wheelchair, was unable to speak or open his eyes. According to the data provided by the authorities, the young man, 19 years old, lived in the Russian city of Ivanovo, about 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow; He was single and unemployed after having worked as a barber in that town.
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Moscow points fingers at Ukraine
Russian media have published more alleged details about Fayzov. According to the Shot channel, this alleged murderer opened fire on the agents who detained them, according to the Kremlin, on the M-3 highway, which connects Moscow with Ukraine, about 150 kilometers from the border. As a result of the chase after skipping a checkpoint with the white Renault he was driving, Fayzov was injured. Putin assured on Saturday that the attackers had support from the Ukrainian side to cross the front, although the authorities have not explained in more detail how they intended to cross two areas as extremely guarded as the Bryansk border region and the war front itself.
Another of the accused is Shamsidin Fariduni, a 25-year-old Tajik citizen, married with an eight-month-old baby and registered in the Russian city of Krasnogorsk, although he officially worked in a factory in Podolsk, south of Moscow. His face was swollen from the effects of the blows when he entered the Moscow court. According to recordings released online after Fariduni's arrest and interrogation, this alleged attacker was beaten and interrogated in an open field as soon as he was arrested last Saturday.
In one of the videos released of the interrogation, the detainee stated that he was contacted via Telegram by an unknown mediator, “without a name, without a surname”, who proposed that he commit an indiscriminate massacre in exchange for half a million rubles, about 5,000 euros. To the change. “I killed for money,” he added, visibly scared in front of the Russian security forces.
One of the Telegram channels close to the Russian mercenary group Wagner broadcast another photograph of Fariduni this Sunday in which the suspect was lying with his pants down and his genitals supposedly connected to a TA-57 military telecommunications device, which may also be manipulated to be used as a means of torture with electric shocks. According to the Ria Novosti agency, Fariduni published several photos on his Instagram profile geolocated in Istanbul on February 23. One of the photos presumably included the Fatih mosque.
The alleged terrorist Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, 30 years old, married with a son, arrived at the room standing, although with a huge bandage covering the right side of his head. According to a video leaked by security forces to Russian Telegram channels, security forces cut off his ear and put it in his mouth at the time of his arrest. The alleged terrorist admitted his guilt before the judge.
Rachabalizoda testified after Dalerjon Mirzoev, 32, registered in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk – about 3,500 kilometers from Moscow – married and with four children, including two year-and-a-half-old twins. Mirzoev was the first to be brought before the court. The detainee appeared with blows to his face – more than those he presented in the first images after his arrest – and a plastic bag tied around his neck.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) announced this weekend the arrest of 11 suspects, including the four direct attackers. This Monday, the owner of the white Renault in which the attackers fled, the taxi driver Dilovar Islomov (of Russian nationality, born in 1999), paraded through the same court. “It was my car. When I saw it in the photos I went into shock. I didn't know what to do, I tried to call my brother, but he didn't answer me. “He had told me that a friend needed the vehicle,” he declared when trying to defend his innocence.
The taxi driver has assured that he went to a police station when he recognized his car. Both the father and brother of the owner of the white Renault, Isroil and Aminchon Islomov, respectively, have also been arrested and brought to court. The Prosecutor's Office believes one of the attackers, Fariduni, recruited Aminchon in January of this year and Dilovar this same month.
Sources from the Dossier Center, founded by the dissident in exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky, assure that the Russian Security Council was aware of the “high risk” of an attack by the faction of the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K), especially after other frustrated attempts in Austria, Germany and Kyrgyzstan since the end of 2023. In fact, the FSB announced on March 7 that it had “neutralized” an attack “against the faithful of some synagogues in Moscow” by an ISIS cell. K.
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