ISIL-affiliated gang members get long jail terms for plotting terror acts in Moscow, St. Petersburg
SAMARA. April 19 (Interfax) - Russia's Volga District Military Court has convicted seven members of a gang affiliated with ISIL (banned in Russia).
Defendants Farukh Dzhumayev and Ravshan Karimov were each sentenced to 16 years in a high-security prison, the court's press service told Interfax. The other defendants, Kamil Abdulazhanov, Kazim Abdulazhanov, Ilkhom Kadyraliyev, Abrorbek Karim-Akhunov, and Namandzhon Khurulbayev, each received 12 years in a high-security prison.
All of the defendants were also ordered to pay fines of 350,000 rubles.
All were charged with establishing a terrorist community and participating in it, the illegal production of weapons, and the illegal acquisition, transfer, sale, storage, transportation, or possession of explosives or explosive devices. Apart from that, the court found Karimov, Kadyraliyev, and Dzhumayev guilty of involvement in a terrorist act.
The defendants pleaded not guilty, the press service said.
On February 7, 2016, officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) detained gang members in Yekaterinburg who were plotting to stage terrorist acts in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Sverdlovsk region and intended to go to Syria afterwards.
The group's actions were directed by an ISIL member who had arrived from Turkey. The gang included citizens of Russia and Central Asian countries.
A laboratory for making improvised explosive devices, as well as explosives, electric detonators, firearms, grenades, bomb parts, and extremist literature, were found during searches of the suspects' places of residence.