The homeland of the suspects in the Russian massacre lives with poverty and religious tensions

The four men accused of the massacre at a concert hall in Moscow have been identified by authorities as citizens of Tajikistan, some of the thousands migrating to Russia every year from the poorest of the former Soviet republics to eke out a living.

In addition to extreme poverty, religious tensions abound in Tajikistan. Hardline Islamists were one of the main forces opposing the government in a 1990s civil war that devastated the country. The militants who claimed responsibility for the Moscow massacre that killed 139 people — an offshoot of the Islamic State group in neighboring Afghanistan — reportedly recruit many people from Tajikistan.

The four suspects who were arraigned in a Moscow court on Sunday night on terrorism charges appeared to have been beaten or injured during their detention. One was carried on a stretcher and was dressed in hospital clothes.

The Russian president Vladimir Putin described the suspects on Monday as “radical Islamists”, and repeated his accusation that Ukraine could have played a role in the attack. kyiv has flatly denied this.

Here’s a look at the people, militia groups and political history tied to the Moscow attack:

lthe suspects

The oldest defendant is Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32, who may have been living in Russia illegally. He was shown sitting in a glass cell in court, with a black eye and a swollen face.

Mirzoyev had allegedly obtained a three-month residence permit in the city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired. In a video of his interrogation that was shared on social media, he allegedly says that he was recently living in a Moscow hostel with another of the suspects. The court indicated that he is married and has four children, but it is unknown if he has a job.

Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, 30, is apparently unemployed. Registered as a resident of Russia, he could not remember which city, according to Russian news reports. When he appeared in court he had his head clumsily bandaged after Russian officials allegedly cut off one of his ears.

Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, apparently led the most stable life of the four suspects. He was registered in Krasnogorsk, the Moscow suburb where the massacre took place, and worked in a flooring factory. He allegedly told his interrogators that he had been offered 500,000 rubles (approximately US$5,425) to carry out the attack, the equivalent of about 2 and a half years’ average minimum wage in Tajikistan.

Mukhammadsobir Fayzov, 19, was carried to court on a stretcher, with a catheter attached and one eye injured or missing, and occasionally appeared to become unconscious. He had worked as an apprentice at a beauty salon in the city of Ivanovo, famous for its textile industry, but he reportedly left that job in November.

TIslamic ensions in Tajikistan

It is estimated that up to 1.5 million Tajik migrants are in Russia after fleeing the poverty and unemployment that plague their mountainous, landlocked country. Tajikistan has various mineral resources, but the industry for their extraction has developed slowly due to the delay in foreign investment and the lack of geological information, among other factors.

Although its almost 10 million inhabitants are overwhelmingly Muslim, there are often tensions related to Islam.

Islamists were a crucial opposition during a 1992-1997 civil war that devastated the economy and in which the government killed nearly 150,000 people. When the conflict ended, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon took steps to severely restrict religious freedom.

The government limited how many mosques could be built, prohibited women and those under 18 from attending mosques, and prohibited religious instruction outside the home for children. Critics say such limits encouraged people to turn to radical and underground Muslim factions via the Internet.

Tajikistan has not made any official statement regarding the arrest of the four suspects in the attack. But Rahmon told Putin in a phone call that the “Terrorists have no nationality, homeland or religion,” as quoted by the press service of the Tajik government.

ANDthe Islamic State group against Russia

Most of the attacks linked to Islamic extremists that affected Russia in the last 25 years were carried out by Chechen separatists, such as the takeover of a school in the town of Beslan in 2004 — in which more than 300 people were killed. , or were attributed to them, such as the attacks on apartment buildings in 1999 that sparked the second war between Russia and Chechnya.

But the attacks that began in 2015 were claimed or attributed to the Islamic State group. The group opposed Russian intervention in Syria, where Moscow sought to tip the balance in favor of President Bashar Assad’s forces.

The US government has said it has intelligence confirming that ISIS is responsible for the weekend attack in the Russian capital.

After ISIS declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in June 2014, thousands of men and women from around the world flocked to join the extremist group. Among them were thousands who came from the former Soviet Union, including hundreds from Tajikistan.

One of the most prominent figures to join IS was Gulmurod Jalimov, who was an officer in Tajikistan’s special forces before defecting to IS in Syria in 2015. In 2017, the Russian military said Jalimov was killed in a bombing. Russian on Syria.

IS has claimed responsibility for the explosion on a Russian commercial plane carrying tourists home from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. Two years later, he claimed to be behind the suicide bombing on a St. Petersburg metro train that killed 15 people.

Two weeks before the Moscow theater massacre, Russian officials said they had exterminated members of an IS cell that planned to attack a synagogue. In the same month, they reported killing six IS fighters in the Ingushetia region, adjacent to Chechnya.