MOSCOW, Russia
President of Russia, Vladimir Putin on Monday night said for the first time that "radical Islamists" were behind Friday's attack on a concert hall outside Moscow, but otherwise doubled down on his previous claim that Ukraine may have somehow been involved and suggested that Washington was allegedly trying to cover it up.
Eleven people were detained on
Saturday in connection with the previous night's attack, which saw camouflaged
gunmen storm into the popular music venue Crocus City Hall, open fire on
concert-goers and set the building ablaze, killing at
least 139 people and wounding 182 others
"We know that the crime
was committed by radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world has
itself been fighting for centuries," Putin said in a televised meeting
with top government officials.
"We also see that the
United States by various means is trying to convince its satellites, as well as
other countries, that according to their intelligence information, there was
allegedly no trace of Kyiv's [involvement] in the Moscow terrorist attack,"
he continued.
"This atrocity may be
just one link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with
our country since 2014," Putin said, referring to Ukraine as a
"neo-Nazi regime."
"Of course, it is
necessary to answer the question, why after committing the crime did the
terrorists then try to go to Ukraine? Who was waiting for them there?"Muhammadsobir Faizov, one of the suspected assailant's behind Friday's deadly attack.
Putin had claimed before
that the gunmen behind Friday's attack had driven their getaway car toward
the Ukrainian border before being detained the following morning.
The Islamic State’s affiliate
ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in Russia since
the 2003 Beslan school siege, and social media channels linked to the militant
group have published graphic videos of the gunmen committing the mass killing
at Crocus City Hall.
Earlier on Monday, Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov had declined to comment on the apparent link between the
Islamic State and the concert attack.
Meanwhile, a court in Moscow
has ordered four men accused of killing at least 137 people in an attack at a
Moscow concert hall to be held in custody on "terror" charges, with
the death toll expected to climb as more than 100 people remain hospitalized.
The men face life in prison,
although Russian officials have clamored for the lifting of a moratorium on the
death penalty to deliver even harsher sentences.
In a series of late-night
court hearings in Moscow that ran into the early hours of Monday, the four men,
with bruises and cuts over their faces, were dragged into the court in front of
dozens of reporters who had assembled at the capital's Basmanny district court.
Russian Federal Security
Service (FSB) officers wheeled one of the men into the hearing on a medical
gurney, following reports and videos on Russian social media of violent
interrogations after the men were arrested on Saturday.
The court said two of the defendants had pleaded guilty.
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