A Moscow court has ordered the detention of four suspects in the largest attack on Russian soil in more than a decade as the country held a day of mourning over the assault, which killed at least 137 people and injured 180.
The men, who are accused of storming a Moscow music venue on Friday evening, shooting concertgoers and setting the building on fire, appeared before the court late on Sunday. Their identities were confirmed for the first time and they were placed in custody pending trial.
Three of the men were officially identified as citizens of Tajikistan, the Tass state news agency said, citing its reporter in the courtroom. The fourth suspect is also believed to come from the country. Several of the men asked for translators as they could not speak Russian.
Jihadist group Isis has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack. The group shared a photograph of who they said were the four attackers against a black Isis flag taken prior to the assault, as well as a graphic video filmed by one of the men during their rampage.
Flags were flown at half-mast on Sunday and Russians brought flowers to the site, a vast concert hall on the capital’s outskirts that is now a burnt-out shell after a fire started by the assailants tore through the building.
The four suspects were apprehended on Saturday in the Bryansk region, the Investigative Committee, Russia’s top investigative body, said. The region borders Ukraine and it said the men were aiming to flee the country.
Videos shared on social media, apparently filmed by members of the security services in a wooded, roadside area, showed the four shortly after they were captured. The men appeared bloodied and injured, suggesting they had been brutally interrogated.
On Sunday the men were first led into the headquarters of the Investigative Committee in Moscow for questioning, their hands tied and eyes bound with bandages and scarves.
They were then transported to the capital’s Basmanny court, where they were accused of terrorism and placed in pre-trial detention for an initial two-month period as the investigation into the attack is conducted.
The suspects were brought before the court and media individually, each sitting in a glass box.
The first was named by the court as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32, a citizen of Tajikistan with four children, state news agencies reported. Mirzoyev pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, the court said in a statement.
A second man, who had a large bandage over his ear, also pleaded guilty. He was named as 30-year-old Rajabalizod Saidakrami.
The two other suspects were named as Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, a migrant worker who had a job at a factory in Podolsk in the Moscow region, and Muhammadsobir Faizov, 19, who worked as a hairdresser in the central Russian city of Ivanovo.
Faizov was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair, wearing a hospital gown and accompanied by doctors, photos from the courtroom showed.
An earlier video shared on social media had shown him being interrogated via a translator in a hospital ward. He appeared to have been beaten and injured in one eye.
The trial, which will take place once the investigation has been completed, will be closed to the public, to protect any relatives of the suspects, Tass reported.
Despite the suspects’ stated origins, Russian officials have sought to direct popular anger over the attack towards Ukraine, which has strongly denied any involvement. In a brief televised speech on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made no mention of Isis or Islamist terrorism, despite the group claiming responsibility.
Kyiv’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba in a statement on social media platform X on Sunday called Putin a “pathological liar” who was “desperately attempting to link Ukraine or other western nations to the mass shooting near Moscow, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims”.
Putin spoke to Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon in a call in which Rahmon condemned the attack and said the two countries would continue working together closely to fight terrorism and extremism, the Tajik government’s press service said on Sunday.
Tajikistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan, is an impoverished country where large numbers of people travel to Russia as migrant workers.
Hundreds of its citizens joined Isis in Iraq and Syria in 2014-15, and Tajiks now make up a large share of Isis-Khorasan or Isis-K, the militant group’s Afghan branch, according to analysts who monitor extremist groups. The US has indicated it believes Isis-K to be responsible for Friday’s attack in Moscow.
The Investigative Committee said it had discovered two Kalashnikov rifles, 28 magazines and more than 500 rounds of ammunition at the scene of the attack.
In his address to the country, Putin pledged that Russia would find and punish everyone involved in the attack, “whomever they may be, and whoever sent them”.
“We will identify and punish everyone who stands behind the terrorists, who prepared this evil act, this attack on Russia,” he said. Some Russian propagandists and pundits began calling for the death penalty.
On Sunday, state news agencies shared a video of Putin at a church at his official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, lighting a candle in memory of those killed in the attack.
The number injured rose to 180 on Sunday, according to the health ministry of the Moscow region, which shared lists of names of hospitalised people. The death toll, currently reported by law enforcement to be 137 people including three children, may rise further as emergency services continue to work at the site. Almost 70 bodies have been identified so far.
The assault has shocked Russia, triggering an outpouring of grief and recalling the Islamist insurgencies that marked the first decade of Putin’s rule.
Additional reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv
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