The Investigative Committee announced that it had obtained significant data on the preparations for the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall from the mobile phones of the accused.
As noted by the Investigative Committee, the Crocus City Hall concert hall was chosen as the location for the attack on the instructions of the curator who led the terrorists’ actions.
According to investigators, on the morning of February 24, on the anniversary of the start of the special military operation, one of the accomplices, on the instructions of the curator, found on Internet resources and sent him screenshots of images of the entrances to the Crocus City Hall building and the access roads to it.
Along with this, the Investigative Committee added, photographs of people in camouflage uniforms with a Ukrainian flag against the backdrop of destroyed houses and a Ukrainian postage stamp with an obscene gesture were found on the terrorist’s phone.
“This data may indicate a connection between the terrorist act committed and the conduct of a special military operation,” the Investigative Committee emphasized.
According to the latest official data, as a result of the shooting and subsequent fire at Crocus on March 22, 144 people were killed and another 551 were injured.
On Monday, April 1, a court in Moscow, at the request of the Investigative Committee, arrested the tenth person accused of the terrorist attack at Crocus. According to investigators, a few days before the terrorist attack, the detainee transferred money to the accomplice of the terrorist attack for the terrorists’ accommodation. In addition, he transferred part of the funds to one of the perpetrators after the crime was committed.
In addition, on April 4, the Russian FSB announced the detention of three more accomplices of the Crocus City Hall terrorists in Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Omsk. As follows from the department’s message, all the detainees are from the Central Asian region. Two of them are foreigners, another has Russian citizenship.
The FSB clarified that two of the detainees transferred money to purchase firearms and vehicles used in the terrorist attack. The third detainee was directly involved in recruiting accomplices of the terrorist attack and financing its perpetrators.
In addition, on April 1, the FSB also announced the suppression of the activities of a cell of terrorists consisting of foreigners who were preparing a terrorist attack in crowded places in Kaspiysk. According to security forces, the attackers had an improvised explosive device and automatic weapons.
Along with this, the detainees also participated in financing and providing support for the perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Crocus.
Putin talks about those who ordered the terrorist attack
Vladimir Putin expressed the opinion that the task of those who ordered the terrorist attack at Crocus was to destroy the unity of Russians. The President suggested that Russia cannot be the target of terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.
“We have a country that demonstrates a unique example of interfaith harmony and unity, interreligious unity, interethnic. And in the external arena it behaves in such a way that it can hardly be an object of attack from Islamic fundamentalists,” the president said at a meeting of the XII Congress of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, which took place on April 4.
The desire to undermine the unity of Russian society, the president said, especially in modern conditions, “is certainly visible.”