Two alleged terrorists from Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region who failed to carry out an attack during the 2011 New Year celebrations on Red Square in Moscow signed pretrial cooperation agreements with investigators, Kommersant business daily reported on Monday.
According to the daily, 31-year-old Timur Akubekov, who is accused of aiding terrorists to prepare the attack, and 24-year-old failed suicide bomber Zeynap Suyunova said they became involved in terrorism against their will.
Suyunova said that while studying pharmacology in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, she made friends with a group of Wahhabis, left home and married a man who turned out to be a militant. After her husband was arrested for organizing terrorist attacks, Suyunova was taken to the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan where she was told that her spouse had died and she had to take revenge for him by blowing herself up in Moscow.
The alleged suicide bomber was nabbed in January 2011 after her neighbor, who was also believed to be a suicide bomber, had accidentally blown herself up tying a belt with explosives. Suyunova was arrested shortly afterward in the city of Volgograd where she was hiding from police, Kommersant reported.
Akubekov, who was also arrested in early 2011 after police discovered an improvised explosive device in his Moscow apartment, said that he had been let down by his Dagestani friends who asked him to keep several boxes with “sauna heaters,” the daily said.
“He [Akubekov] told police about all the details in preparing terrorist attacks that he knew of and regretted that he had become involuntarily involved in planning a crime. The Russian Investigative Committee made a pretrial agreement with him and launched a separate criminal case on storing explosives,” the daily said.
Both Akubekov and Suyunova, who agreed to cooperate with the investigators just after their arrests, hope to receive lighter jail terms.