Top Dagestani police officer taken into custody over 2010 Moscow metro bombings
MOSCOW. Nov 23 (Interfax) - The Basmanny Court of Moscow ordered on Monday that the police chief of the Kizlyar district in Russia's internal republic of Dagestan, Col. of the Police Gazi Isayev, charged with helping the terrorists responsible for the Moscow metro bombings in 2010, be remanded in custody.
"The court ruled in favor of the investigator's request to take Gazi Isayev into custody until January 4 as a pretrial restriction," court spokesperson Irina Morozova told Interfax.
When making its decision, the court concluded that a more lenient restraining measure is impossible in Isayev's case.
The Russian Investigative Committee reported Isayev's detention earlier. According to it, Isayev himself drove senior members of structural divisions of the Caucasus Emirate criminal community (banned in Russia) across Dagestan on a number of occasions and "personally drove one female suicide bomber with an improvised explosive device attached to her body to the bus terminal near Kizlyar, from which she departed to Moscow in order to stage a terrorist act."
Investigators also believe that in 2009-2010, Isayev, as a Caucasus Emirate member, "abused his power in order to provide the leaders of this criminal community with information related to the work of the Kizlyar district police department and special operations against illegal armed groups."
Isayev has been charged with participating in a criminal community as a person abusing his office, banditry, and terrorism.
Forty people were killed and around 100 injured when a bomb was detonated at the Lubyanka metro station and another at the Park Kultury metro station during morning rush hour on March 29, 2010.
An informed source told Interfax about Isayev's detention on Sunday. The suspect's house and office were searched before his detention and various documents were seized, the source said.
The source added that the district police chief is also suspected of organizing a murder.