“I didn’t notice anything strange”: the suspect’s colleagues are shocked by the attack in Moscow

Former colleagues and customers at the small barbershop where Muhamadsobir Fayzov, now a suspect in the terror attack, once worked were stunned when they saw his arrest and what the young man was suspected of doing.

They knew the 19-year-old as a promising, hard-working stylist and saw no sign that he and three other gunmen of Tajik origin would be charged with last Friday’s bloody massacre at a concert hall in Moscow.

“He was considered a good hairdresser… I didn’t notice anything strange about him,” Jamina Safiyeva, the owner of a hair salon outside Moscow where Mr Fayzov worked three months before the attack that killed 139 people, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

Portraits of the suspects: ordinary black workers, like hundreds of thousands of others

Fayzov was brought into the courtroom on a stretcher on Sunday, with a catheter attached and one eye injured or missing. At the time of the court’s arraignment, his consciousness appeared to be fading.

After Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in more than two decades, few details about the suspected shooters’ pasts have emerged. Russian authorities continue to try to link a “Ukrainian trail” to the attack, with FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov saying on Tuesday that he believed Ukraine, the United States and Britain were involved. However, he could not provide any evidence for this.

All four men are Tajik nationals who were apparently radicalized and recruited by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).

The men reportedly lived in and around Moscow. Ordinary workers in Russia who left poverty and unemployment in their native lands out of approximately 1.5 million Tajik migrants.

The main defendant is 32-year-old Dalerjon Mirzoyev, who is believed to have been living in Russia illegally. He was shown sitting in a glass cage in the courtroom with a bruised eye and bruised face.

Another suspected shooter, Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, 30, was apparently unemployed. Registered as a Russian resident, he could not even remember which city, according to Russian news reports. When he appeared in court, his head was crudely bandaged after Russian officials cut off one of his ears.

25 years old Shamsidine Fariduni seemed to have led the most stable life of the four suspects. He was registered in Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow where the murders took place, and worked at a floor covering factory.

Horrifying videos and photos of their interrogations that have been circulated show that the men were tortured. Human rights experts have warned that any future statements or confessions they make could be highly unreliable. The Russian authorities did not even intend to hide the tortures carried out, on the contrary, they were deliberately demonstrated.

It is not yet clear when and how these men were able to become radicalized and join ISIS-K. This radical group, which in 2015 founded by more aggressive members of the Pakistani Taliban, has long recruited citizens from Central Asia, including Tajikistan.

Xenophobia in Russia and arrests

In Russia, these men would have faced the same difficult life as hundreds of thousands of other migrants from Central Asia. Migrants from Tajikistan, lured by wages several times higher than in their homeland and a visa-free regime, often live in cramped apartments and dormitories, often sharing a dingy room on the outskirts of Moscow with two dozen other workers.

Migrants, who are hated by many Russians (the society has a long history of anti-migrant attitudes and racist sentiments, notes The Guardian), also face frequent police searches and arrests. Some of them are semi-legally mobilized into the Russian army.

During one such raid in January footage shows police in Moscow forcing a group of Tajik workers to squat; the incident angered the Tajik community and led to protests by Tajik officials.

Radicalization in Tajikistan

The potent mix of xenophobia, poverty and discrimination faced by Tajik men in Russia may have been a fertile ground for ISIS-R recruitment.

However, their radicalization may also have taken place at home in Tajikistan.

Although almost 10 million With a majority Muslim population, Islam-related tensions are common in the impoverished Central Asian nation.

Islamists were the main opponent during 1992-1997. civil war, during which up to 150 thousand people died. people and the country’s economy was ruined. After the war, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon took measures to severely restrict religious freedoms. Then men were banned from wearing beards and hundreds of mosques were closed. In 2017 alone approximately 13 thousand were forcibly shaved. men’s beards, some of whom were later detained.

Observers have warned that some of these measures have backfired, with authorities radicalizing far more of their citizens than they are curbing.

At least a thousand Tajiks have become attackers of foreign units of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. in 2015 a high-ranking Tajik police commander defected to ISIS, appeared there brandishing a sniper rifle and promising to bring jihad to Russia and the United States.

Russia is not going to solve the problem, it would rather blame Ukraine

Early signs of an investigation into the case are clear: The Kremlin is unlikely to devote significant resources to fighting Islamic extremists, instead preparing the ground to blame the attack on Ukraine.

On Monday evening, Putin acknowledged that the terrorist attack was carried out by radical Islamists, but reiterated his earlier claims that Ukraine “probably had some” hand in the attack.

On Tuesday, Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of Russia’s Security Council and a close ally of Putin, went a step further, saying that Ukraine was “certainly” responsible for Friday’s attack at a Moscow concert hall. His words were seconded by A. Bortnikov, who, without any evidence, stated that he believed that the USA, Great Britain and Ukraine were behind the attack.

“Putin wants to focus on Ukraine, not on Islamic terrorism,” Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security services, told The Guardian. “Perhaps precisely because there are no easy answers to how to fight extremism in Central Asia.”

Instead, in the days after the mass killings at the Crocus City Hall concert hall near Moscow, innocent Tajik migrants across Russia faced threats, verbal abuse and discrimination.

“A handful of individuals have brought shame to the entire nation. Now they look at us as if we are cursed, one Tajik migrant told Eeurasianet. “There is no feeling of safety when walking around the city.”

The local Tajik community even issued a message urging their compatriots to “go out less”, although they admitted that this could be very difficult to achieve.

The last days before the attack

The exact agenda of the suspects before the attack remains murky.

Two of them visited Crocus City Hall in the weeks before the attack, according to Shot, a Telegram channel closely linked to Russian security services. “Shot” also published a picture of a man similar to one of the suspects Sh. Fariduni, photo in the concert hall two weeks before the attack.

A Turkish security official told Reuters on Monday that two of the attackers on March 2. left Turkey for Moscow on the same flight. The official said they came to Turkey to extend their residence permits in Russia, but were not radicalized there. He said that the attackers had lived in Moscow for a long time.

However, Turkey seems to have taken the attack seriously. Turkish authorities announced on Tuesday that they had detained 147 people suspected of links to Islamic State in nationwide operations, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Tuesday, without directly mentioning the shooting in Moscow.