Russia says suspects detained in Caucasus linked to Moscow concert attack, security agency reports

April 2, 2024 by No Comments

Russia’s top security agency said on Monday that it had broken up what it called a “terrorist cell” whose members had provided weapons and cash to the suspected attackers of the Moscow concert hall. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said that on Sunday it detained four suspected members of the cell in the Russian province of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. The agency alleged that the suspects detained in Dagestan were involved in channeling funds and providing weapons to the gunmen who attacked the concert hall on Moscow’s western edge on March 22nd, killing 144 people in the deadliest attack on Russian soil in two decades. “The detained militants directly participated in financing the perpetrators of the March 22nd terror in Moscow and providing them with terror means,” the FSB said in a statement. It said one of the suspects detained in Dagestan had confessed to personally bringing weapons to the Moscow attackers. The FSB released a video showing one of the suspects saying that they also planned an attack in the city of Kaspiysk in Dagestan. It wasn’t clear whether the two confessions came from the same person. The agency said the suspects are foreign nationals, without specifying their nationality. The suspected attackers of the Moscow concert hall arrested hours after the March 22nd raid are citizens of the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan. The detention of four suspects in Dagestan follows the arrest of the four suspected gunmen and seven others who were accused of involvement in the attack. An affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.