After the Kremlin spokesperson refused to comment on the claim of the Islamic State in Khorasan (EI-K) organization regarding the attack committed Friday evening near Moscow, Vladimir Putin on Monday, March 25, blamed in the evening, the attack on “radical Islamists”. According to the Russian president, the attackers tried to flee to Ukraine.
“It is important to answer the question of why the terrorists, after their crime, tried to leave for Ukraine. Who was waiting for them there? “, he asked during a government meeting, while kyiv denied any involvement in the attack.
In the morning, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The investigation is ongoing and the presidential administration would be wrong to comment on the progress of the investigation. We won’t do it,” while three new people were remanded in custody. Dmitri Peskov had clarified that the Russian president had not planned at this stage to go to Crocus City Hall, the site of the attack.
Vladimir Putin’s chief communicator added that “the president intends to hold a meeting to discuss the measures taken after the terrorist attack. [It will take part] the heads of the security bloc, the social bloc and the heads of (…) Moscow and the Moscow oblast.”
On Monday, Russian state television made no mention of ISIS or Ukraine, but it did say that patriotic education classes in the country’s schools today focused on terrorism. At the scene of the attack, investigators continued to search the rubble of the concert hall, ravaged by a gigantic fire started by the attackers.
Friday’s massacre left at least 137 dead in a concert hall in the suburbs of Moscow, the deadliest attack on European soil claimed by IS. The number of injured stands at 182, of whom 97 were still hospitalized on Monday, according to the authorities. Members of the UN Security Council observed a minute of silence on Monday, at the request of Russia, in memory of these victims.
Eleven people arrested in total
Dmitri Peskov also did not want to comment on the suspects’ allegations of torture, which emerged after the publication of videos on social networks and photos showing them with bloody faces. “I will leave this question unanswered,” Peskov said when asked by journalists.
In footage of their arrests, shown on Russian public television, three of the men had blood on their faces. Another video, posted on the Internet and whose authenticity has not been confirmed, appears to show one of the suspects having his ear cut off by an individual off-camera.
At the suspects’ court hearing Sunday evening, one of them had a white bandage on his ear and another arrived in a wheelchair with his eyes closed.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, for his part, congratulated “those who caught” the suspects and declared that it was “more important to kill everyone involved. Those who paid, those who sympathized, those who helped.”
The authorities said they had arrested eleven people in total, including these four alleged attackers already in prison. On Monday, Russian investigators requested the pre-trial detention of three of the suspects. “Three files have been received,” the Basmanny court in the Russian capital announced to Agence France-Presse.
These three men are accused of “terrorism” and face life imprisonment, according to the state agency RIA Novosti. Their pre-trial detention, set until May 22, may be extended pending their trial, the date of which has not yet been set. Asked by journalists on Monday about the other suspects, Dmitri Peskov did not respond, referring, again, to the investigation. The fight against terrorism “requires total international cooperation”, he said on Monday, but this “does not exist at all”.
“Increased cooperation”
French President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, assured that he had offered Moscow “increased cooperation” on the subject. “We must guard against any instrumentalization or distortion, but be demanding and effective. It is in this spirit that we are moving forward and I hope that Russia will do the same,” said the French president upon his arrival in Guyana. “It would be both cynical and counterproductive for Russia itself and the security of its nationals to use this context to try to turn it against Ukraine,” he insisted to the press.
The Islamic State organization claimed responsibility for the attack perpetrated Friday evening against a concert hall near Moscow. Its Afghan branch, the Islamic State in Khorasan (EI-K), is the first suspect for experts on global terrorism. According to Emmanuel Macron, the French intelligence services believe that this entity “fomented this attack and carried it out”.
The executive took note, during a meeting on Sunday evening at the Elysée, that “this particular group which is involved, it seems, in this attack, had carried out several attempts on [the] ground in recent months [French],” explained the head of state.