Russia has charged four men with committing an act of terrorism following Friday’s Moscow concert hall massacre that claimed the lives of 137 people and injured 182 more. The four men, citizens of the predominantly Muslim ex-Soviet republic of Tajikistan, are accused of being responsible for the attack that occurred during a rock concert at the Crocus City Hall on Friday night. Seven other people were also detained for their role in the assault.
Verified footage showed camouflage-clad gunmen opening fire with automatic weapons in the concert hall, with screaming people rushing for the exits. Investigators said some died from gunshot wounds and others in a huge fire that was started in the complex. Reports said the gunmen lit the blaze using petrol from canisters they carried in rucksacks.
The four men appeared in a courtroom on Sunday, March 24th, all of them seemingly bruised and battered. One of the men was seen sitting in a wheelchair, another with one of his ears in bandages. Video footage uploaded on social media sites claiming to be depicting scenes from the interrogation has not been officially verified. Three of the four men pleaded guilty to all charges.
The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the massacre, and on Saturday released what it said was footage of the attack. The Islamic State’s likely motive for striking at Russia is the latter’s intervention against it in 2015 during Syria’s civil war. In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Egypt, killing all 224 people on board. The group has also claimed several attacks in Russia’s Caucasus and other regions in recent years.
According to U.S. officials, the United States has intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim of responsibility. The White House said it shared information with Russia early this month about a planned attack in Moscow, which Russia’s ambassador to the United States denied.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, while calling the attack an act of terror, has so far not mentioned the Islamic State, instead implying that Ukraine—which was invaded by Russian forces more than two years ago—had a role to play. Of the fleeing gunmen, he said:
They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Putin of seeking to divert blame for the attack by naming Ukraine as a culprit. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said “there was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.”
Friday’s attack was the deadliest on Russian territory since the 2004 Beslan school siege when Islamist militants took more than 1,000 people hostage. More than 300 people died at the time, over half of them children.
