Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced that it has arrested four alleged accomplices in the terror attack outside Moscow, Russian state media RIA Novosti said on April 1.
The FSB claimed that the four suspects, who were arrested in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, were plotting another attack in the Dagestan city of Kaspiysk.
Multiple gunmen opened fire on the Crocus town hall in Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow, on the evening of March 22, killing at least 144 people. An affiliate of the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack shortly afterwards.
Russian authorities detained 11 people in the first 24 hours after the attack. A Moscow court charged four of them, all citizens of Tajikistan, with committing an act of terrorism on March 24.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with other top Russian officials, tried to blame Ukraine without providing any evidence.
Ukraine and the US have rejected the Kremlin’s accusations.
Dagestan, an ethnically diverse and predominantly Muslim republic, has seen repeated acts of terrorism following the Second Chechen War that officially ended in 2000. A violent but low-intensity insurgency against the government has also continued for for several years in the area.
Most of the fighting took place in neighboring Chechnya, but there was considerable spread into Dagestan.
A significant number of people from Dagestan, perhaps as many as 5,000, have gone to fight for ISIS in Syria or Iraq.
