Last week has seen a series of detentions of terrorist attacks suspects and their accomplices. On Saturday two criminals were neutralized while trying to resist security agents in Stavropol region. The National Anti-Terrorist Center reported that one of those liquidated was a terrorist, who had arrived in Russia having been trained in the camps of the so-called ISIS.

Moreover, FSB special forces have captured terrorists and their accomplices in Vladimir and Tver regions as well as in Krasnodar region. Two Azimov brothers implicated in the explosion in St. Petersburg's metro were detained in the suburbs of Moscow. Andrey Medvedev reports on this week's operations. Go! The Azimov brothers were detained one after another. First was the younger Abror Azimov. The arrest was tough as the suspected organizer of the terrorist act in St. Petersburg might have been armed. Your surname! Azimov! Name! Abror! Second name? Akhranovich. What are you detained for? Do you know? Yes. Soon the elder was caught in the suburbs. Go! Akram Azimov was detained as fiercely as his brother. He was armed too. Turn your face. Your surname? Azimov. Name? Akram. Second name. Akhranovich.

Apparently, the grenade he carried with him was intended for such a case — to explode himself. Do you have any weapons or prohibited articles? The investigation suggests that Abror Azimov was one of the organizers of the terrorist act in St. Petersburg's metro. According to operatives, it was he who had prepared the suicide bomber Akbarjon Jalilov. He worked with him, manipulated him, was his mentor.

Azimov initially confessed everything, but later at the trial he changed his mind and explained that he hadn't prepared the terrorist attack directly, though he fulfilled the instructions of the curators. Elder Akram is alleged to have transferred money to the performers, helped to get the components for making the bomb, along with his brother he also ensured communications with the emissaries of international terrorist organizations, and obtained the documents for his accomplices which was not difficult. Here we see this week's seizure of a clandestine printing press printing documents for illegal immigrants from all over the former USSR. They said the documents were real. They did look like official ones and were sold for 900 rubles and more.

Foreigners were registered in various dubious creep joints that their owners proudly call "hotels". Many of them are located in industrial zones on the outskirts of the city. The owners, as a rule, understand that the documents of the guests are doubtful, but still register them. They easily evade any responsibility: they do not have to check anything themselves. The Asimov brothers had official citizenship and residence permit. They bought a cheap house in the village and obtained the documents. They committed terrorist attacks in Leningrad in a train. 83-year-old Nikolai Egorov could hardly believe his eyes when he recognized his neighbors being the detained terrorists.





The village of Shulgino in the Vladimir region, which is 40 kilometers from Murom, has no more than a hundred residents. Many houses are abandoned, as everyone leaves for the city. Therefore, the villagers were surprised when a family of six adults and four children, the Azimovs, came to live here a year ago. A neighbor says the men from the Azimov family were in Moscow all the time working either in a canteen or in a sushi bar. They looked like decent people, she can't believe they are terrorists. They bought some food from me, milk and eggs. They strolled here with the children. But why and when did the Azimov brothers join the terrorist network? Why did they begin to prepare a terrorist act? This is being investigated now.

Or it might have been established already, but for now the information is confidential. However, experts are sure it is unlikely to be spurred by a religious factor only. Often, far more prosaic reasons play a more important role like envy, greed, or social stratification. I'm an orientalist specializing in Afghanistan I've worked a lot with the people who believed that jihad was their sacred predestination, who were eager to explode themselves everywhere. In fact, when you talk to them it turns out to be wrong. Believe me. In most cases, it's just the surface, while deeper reasons are economic difficulties. Yes, you're right to say that there are some fanatics who are exposed to influence including a narcotic one, but the truth is these are usually isolated cases.

Azimov was tracked down after the operatives studied the list of calls from the mobile phone of 22-year-old Akbarjon Jalilov, the direct perpetrator of the terrorist act in St. Petersburg. Azimov appears to have recruited and prepared Jalilov during one of his many trips to Turkey. According to the investigation, they got acquainted there. Who enlisted Azimov himself? Probably, he's never seen that man. Today, the terrorist underground in Russia and in Europe is a network structure. Recruitment usually goes through the Internet, where recruiters and missionaries work with young people in closed groups in social networks.

Previously, a recruiter or a courier had to be sent, and caches and stashes had to be made. Now one only needs access to the World Wide Web. Network structures are quite simple. They aren't new, history repeats itself. The growth of information technology, as well as improvement and development of communication make it easier to keep in touch. As a rule, the people who take up arms and are ready to sacrifice themselves, to die killing a huge number of other people, are mentally sick. Their diagnoses are explicit. Recruiters have their own motivation, which is usually related to money.

Today the problem for the special services is that the Internet makes ideological training of a terrorist possible even without conversations and correspondence. A huge amount of information is just uploaded into the Web, videos allegedly confirming crimes of the West against Muslims, quotations, often unreliable, allegedly from sacred books, statements attributed to a prominent religious figure. This creates an information background, even information pressure on people, especially on the young. As a result, individual terrorists or autonomous terrorist cells emerge. And sometimes a person is used for a terrorist act, when he doesn't even recognize it. Take this bag, a man will meet you at this or that metro station, pass it to him. A person gets in the train, and the bag detonates, you see? This is acting behind the scenes. Believe me, such cases are plentiful. It's a common pattern.

A group of recruiters has recently been caught in Krasnodar. They were engaged in propaganda among the youth, agitating for jihad. They appear to have been preparing something, as they had homemade bomb components — 150 grams of explosives, striking elements and extremist literature. FSB carried out several serious operations last week.

Seemingly, one of the detainees, and there are more than ten of them linked with the terrorist act in Petersburg, started providing the operatives with accurate information. Two suspects in the preparation of terrorist attacks were eliminated by FSB in Vladimir region. The terrorist struggled fiercely upon arrest. It's clear why they did so. After a search components for an explosive device and ammunition were found in their house. Operatives believe that they were ready to commit an attack in the near future.