A ninth person accused of being involved in organizing the March 22 attack claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K), the IS affiliate in Afghanistan, has been detained, announced Russian justice, Friday March 29. The attack left more than 140 dead at Crocus City Hall, a concert hall in Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow.
The armed individuals opened fire in the concert hall before setting it on fire. Russian authorities announced a death toll of 143 on Wednesday, while Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Friday that another person had died. Dozens of injured people are still hospitalized.
Four suspected attackers were arrested, along with several suspects accused of helping them. On Friday, a ninth suspect, Nazrimad Loutfoulloi, was taken into custody, the press service of the Moscow courts announced. Like the alleged attackers, he is from Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. Authorities have not specified what role he is accused of playing. His pre-trial detention lasts until at least May 22.
Islamic State claim
The attack is the deadliest in Russia in twenty years, and the worst claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State on European soil. The Islamic State confirmed on Friday the arrest of four of its members, whom it designates as the perpetrators of the attack. In its Thursday edition published Friday at dawn, Al-Nabaa, the jihadist organization’s weekly, specifies that three of them used machine guns while the fourth was responsible for starting a fire.
Despite this clear claim, the Russian authorities persist in establishing a link with Ukraine, a country they have been fighting militarily for more than two years. On Thursday, the Russian Investigative Committee, the body responsible for the main criminal investigations, claimed that the perpetrators of the attack had “links with Ukrainian nationalists” and had received “large” sums of money from Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin himself said that the alleged attackers were trying to flee to Ukraine at the time of their arrest. The director of the Russian security services, Alexander Bortnikov, accused the Ukrainian and Western secret services of having “facilitated” the attack. kyiv, for its part, denies any involvement in this killing.