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Russia charges 8 suspects over involvement in St. Petersburg metro bombing

A police officer escorts a man suspected of involvement in the St. Petersburg metro bombing, inside a court building in St. Petersburg, April 7, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Russian authorities have charged eight suspects with terror offenses following a bomb explosion in St. Petersburg metro that left over a dozen people dead and scores of others wounded.

A court in St. Petersburg announced on Friday that six of the suspects, aged 20 to 39, would be kept in police custody until June 2 while the probe into the deadly attack continued.

The metro blast killed 14 people, mostly students, and injured some 50 others. The Russian Investigative Committee later said the perpetrator of the attack had been a 22-year-old Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen identified as Akbarjon Djalilov, whose body parts were found in one of the train carriages. 

The suspects were all detained in the city on Thursday. According to Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko, the security forces found an improvised explosive device (IED) in one of the suspects’ residences, along with firearms and ammunition.

She said on Thursday that the discovered IED had been “identical” to the one found and defused at Ploshchad Vosstaniya station on Monday. The second bomb had also been planted by Djalilov.

The other two suspects, a male and a female, who had been detained in Moscow on Thursday, also faced terrorism charges on Friday. One of them, a 24-year-old, has already admitted to having contacted with Djalilov.

On Wednesday, security forces also managed to arrest seven nationals from Central Asian countries in St. Petersburg for allegedly recruiting “terrorists” for the Takfiri terrorist groups of Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

The Russian Investigative Committee, however, said Wednesday’s arrests were not linked to Djalilov “for the moment.”


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