Police make arrests as ‘bomb’ found in raid
ST PETERSBURG: Russian security agents yesterday arrested three people suspected of links to a suicide bomber accused of attacking the city’s subway and deactivated an explosive device in the apartment where they lived.
The Investigative Committee said the suspects are residents of the former Soviet Central Asia region like the bomber, 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a native of Kyrgyzstan. Dzhalilov blew himself up on a busy subway line on Monday, killing himself and 13 others and wounding over 50 people.
Djalilov’s remains were found at the blast site and traces of his DNA were also discovered on a bag containing a bomb at another metro station that was successfully defused, investigators said.
The i mpoverished, predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia are seen as fertile ground for Islamic extremists, and thousands of their citizens are believed to have joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
The committee, the nation’s top criminal investigation agency, said investigators also found objects that would help advance the probe during a search of the home on St Petersburg’s eastern outskirts.
“Objects relevant to the investigation were found during the search of the apartment where these people lived,” said the powerful Investigative Committee.
“They were all confiscated and sent for analysis.”
The Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that its experts defused a self-made explosive device at the apartment. The news reports said three people were arrested.
A leading St Petersburg news portal, Fontanka.ru, said materials used in the explosive device found yesterday matched those used by militants in Syria.
Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin has ordered officials to look into any potential “links” between the alleged attacker and the IS group.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet republics were fighting alongside the IS group and other militants in Syria. He has named the IS threat as one of the reasons behind Russia’s military campaign in Syria in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Yesterday’s arrests came a day after law enforcement agencies detained eight Central Asian migrants suspected of acting as recruiters for the IS group and Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch. The investigators found no immediate evidence of their involvement in the subway attack.
No one has claimed responsibility for Monday’s subway bombing, but Russian trains and planes long have been targeted by bombings by Islamist militants.
One of the victims of Monday’s attack, 50-year-old Irina Medyantseva, an artist well-known for the dolls she made, was buried yesterday in a funeral attended by a few dozen relatives and friends.
“I’m thankful to all those who want to help us,” said her husband, Alexander Kaminskiy. “The country and the entire world share our pain.”
The attack has shaken the authorities and rattled St Petersburg just two months before it hosts the opening game of the Confederations Cup football tournament, a curtain raiser for the 2018 World Cup in the country.