Tuesday, March 26, 2024 – The four men suspected of carrying out a brutal attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 139 people have appeared in court on terror charges, as the Russian government defended its security services criticized for failing to prevent the massacre.
Three of the suspects were bent double as they were marched
into the Moscow courtroom late on Sunday night, while the fourth was in a
wheelchair and looked unresponsive.
The suspects, who are from the former Soviet republic of
Tajikistan but worked in Russia on temporary or expired visas, were named by
Moscow City Court as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin
Fariduni and Mukhammadsobir Faizov. They face a maximum sentence of life in
prison.
The men are accused of storming Crocus City Hall in a Moscow
suburb on Friday, shooting civilians at point-blank before setting the building
on fire, causing the roof to collapse while concert-goers were still inside.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre and released
graphic footage showing the incident but the Kremlin earlier alleged, without
evidence, that the perpetrators planned to flee to Ukraine. Kyiv
vehemently denied involvement and called the Kremlin’s claims “absurd.”
At a meeting with other government officials on Monday,
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack had been carried out by
“radical Islamists.”
“We know that the crime was
committed by radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world itself has
been fighting for centuries,” Putin said.
The first suspect charged, Mirzoyev, had a black eye,
bruises over his face and a plastic bag wrapped around his neck. Mirzoyev, 32,
had a temporary resident permit for three months in the Siberian city of
Novosibirsk, but it had expired, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported.
Rachabalizoda, born in 1994, told the court through an
interpreter that he had Russian registration documents but could not remember
where they were.
The third defendant, Fariduni, born in 1998, was employed at
a factory in the industrial city of Podolsk and registered in Krasnogorsk, both
near Moscow.
The three men pleaded guilty to the terrorism charges,
Russian media reported. It was unclear what the fourth man, Faizov, born in
2004, pled. He was pictured lying limp in a wheelchair inside a glass cage.
The men looked beaten and injured as they were brought into
the courtroom.
The four have been remanded into pre-trial detention until
May 2022, the court said.
Later Monday, Russia’s Investigative Committee asked the
court to detain three other men, two brothers and their father in connection
with the attack, Russian state media TASS reported.
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