Russian President Vladimir Putin claims, without providing evidence, that Ukraine was involved in the attack, an allegation Kyiv vehemently denies.
The trial has begun for 19 defendants accused of involvement in the 2024 shooting attack in a Moscow concert hall that killed 149 people, and wounded over 600, in one of the deadliest attacks in the capital since the era of the Russian-Chechen wars in the 1990s and 2000s.
The suspects appearing in court on Monday, under heavy security, kept their heads bowed as they sat in the defendants’ cage.
An ISIL (ISIS) affiliate claimed responsibility for the March 22, 2024 massacre at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in which four gunmen shot people who were waiting for a show by a rock band and then set the building on fire. ISIL’s Afghan branch – also known as ISKP (ISIS-K) – claimed responsibility for the attack.
A massive blaze is seen at the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 22, 2024. Several gunmen burst into the concert hall and fired automatic weapons at the crowd, killing dozens [Sergei Vedyashkin/Moscow News Agency via AP]
President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have claimed, without providing any evidence, that Ukraine was involved in the attack, an allegation Kyiv has vehemently denied.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top criminal investigation agency, concluded in June that the attack had been “planned and carried out in the interests of the current leadership of Ukraine in order to destabilise the political situation in our country”. It also said the four suspected gunmen tried to flee to Ukraine afterward.
The four, all identified as citizens of Tajikistan, were arrested hours after the attack and later appeared in a Moscow court with signs of having been beaten.
The committee said earlier this year that six other suspects were charged in absentia and placed on Russia’s wanted list for allegedly recruiting and organising the training of the four. Other defendants in the trial were accused of helping them.
In 2002, some 40 rebels from Chechnya stormed the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow and took around 800 people hostage while demanding an end to Putin’s war in the separatist southern republic.
Putin refused to negotiate with the fighters, and the standoff ended with mass death days later when Russian special services pumped a powerful gas into the building to stun the hostage-takers before storming it. Most of the 129 hostages who died were killed by the gas.
