Moscow court convicts ISIS members of plotting terrorist attacks on transport system

The Moscow District Military Court found three members of the Islamic State terror group guilty of plotting a series of terrorist attacks on transport facilities in the Moscow region, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) told TASS on Tuesday.

“On May 7, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced Bakhtiyer Makhmudov and Zafarkhon Rakhmatov to 15 years in a high security penal colony,” the FSB said, adding that another defendant in the case, Ruslan Bashirov, who had cooperated with the investigation, had been handed 11 years in a high security penal facility on December 26, 2018.

According to investigators, Makhmudov, Rakhmatov and Bashirov conspired to carry out explosions on the Moscow Central Circle line and in a shopping mall in the capital’s suburban town of Balashikha. Law enforcement officials detained them in December 2017, one day before the planned attacks. Detectives found out that Bashirov had been expected to carry out a bomb blast in the Balashikha’s Edelveis shopping mall on December 12, 2017, while Makhmudov and Rakhmatov had planned to blow up a commuter train between the Shelepikha and Ploshchad Gagarina stations, throw grenades at the train and gun passengers down.

Source: TASS