Russian police appear to have identified one of the men involved in this week’s deadly suicide attack in Moscow. According to this report (which has yet to be officially confirmed) police have linked one of the suspects to the Nogai Jamaat, a little known Islamist group associated with the Caucasus Emirate that operates in northern Chechnya and in Dagestan. From RIA Novosti:
Police have identified the first suspect behind the deadly terrorist attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport as a Russian resident of the southern Stavropol region, a police source close to the investigation told the Kommersant daily.
The suspect, whose surname was revealed as Razdobudko, was allegedly a member of the Nogai Jamaat terrorist group, which was broken up in October, 2010, the paper said.
“He [Razdobudko] is by no means the only person being investigated for taking part in the terrorist attack, so we should not jump to any conclusions,” the source said.
The source said Razdobudko could be one of the organizers or even a perpetrator of Monday’s attack, which killed 35 people in the arrivals zone of Russia’s biggest airport and injured over a hundred.
The Jamestown Foundation has a good backgrounder on the Nogai Jamaat. The group was once under the command of Shamil Basayev, the leader of the Chechen jihadists who was killed by Russian forces in 2006 (Baseyev was replaced by Doku Umarov, who declared the Islamic Caucasus Emirate one year later in 2007). Nogai Jamaat fighters trained under Ibn Khattab, the Saudi-born commander who led the International Islamic Battalion in Chechnya, al Qaeda’s combat unit in the Caucasus.
