The younger brother of the alleged St. Petersburg terrorist Akbarjon Jalilov told RBC that a month before the terrorist attack, he told his relatives about plans to finish building a house in his homeland in 2017, to finally move back to Kyrgyzstan and get married.
The publication's correspondent met with 17-year-old Akhror Jalilov in the city of Osh (in the On Adyr microdistrict, where ethnic Uzbeks live compactly). He said that the last time his brother came home was in February of this year. “He stayed with us for 10-15 days. He wanted to rest and then return to work. While he lived with us, he didn’t go out much. He played computer racing and was interested in cars,” the relative recalled.
“Akbar did not read namaz, did not go to Friday prayers. In February, upon his arrival, he never went to the mosque at all, I did not notice that he somehow changed his behavior,” Akhror claims. He did not see any suspicious literature in the house, and nothing unusual was found on the home computer that Akbar used.
Class teacher Fatima Kadyrzhanova and Akbar's aunts - Suraye and Erkina - confirmed to the publication that the guy never gravitated towards religion. The teacher described Akbarjon as the calmest boy in the class and an average student. He was interested in football, physical education, computer science and Russian, studied poetry, and had bad marks in chemistry and physics, the teacher says. Neither she nor her relatives believe he could have assembled a bomb.
After the eighth grade, Akbar left school and soon, in 2011, left for St. Petersburg - he got a job in a car service center, following in the footsteps of his father, who worked as a body repair master.
In the same 2011, Jalilov Sr. helped his 16-year-old son obtain citizenship (by right of his father having a Russian passport) and returned back to Kyrgyzstan. His son was left alone in Russia. He kept in touch with his relatives by phone, Akhror said.
As his younger brother recalls, after moving to Russia, Akbar took a vacation every year and went to Osh to visit his relatives. However, in 2015 and 2016 he interrupted this tradition. “I asked him when he arrived this February: “Where have you been all this time?” Akbar replied that he served in the Russian army.” However, relatives do not have photographs of the deceased from the army and they do not know in which specific military unit he could have served.
According to his brother, Akbar planned to build an extension to his father’s house this year, then return from Russia to his homeland finally to find himself a wife. Akbarjon, despite his own plans to return to Russia, suggested that his brother, when he turned 18, go to St. Petersburg to work in a sushi bar because of the “good salary.” According to his brother’s recollections, he sent home 10-15 thousand rubles every month, then, when he became a sous-chef, 15-20 thousand rubles.
The Jalilov family does not believe that Akbar himself decided to become a suicide bomber. Relatives say he was set up, tricked into taking a bag and backpack with a bomb, and then detonated remotely.
“During interrogations, I was told that Akbar was connected with the Islamic State (ISIS, a terrorist group banned in Kazakhstan). But he had no reason to get involved with ISIS,” Akhror said.
The representative of the press service of the Municipal Department of Internal Affairs for Osh, Zamir Sadykov, told the journalist that Jalilov is “a guy from a prosperous family.” According to him, everything that happened shocked the residents of Osh. “In recent years, he lived in Russia and what happened was a mistake of the Russian security forces, the FSB and the police,” Sadykov believes.
RBC's source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kyrgyzstan confirmed that the “Kyrgyz” biography of Jalilov Jr., who exploded in St. Petersburg, and his entire family is “clean” - there are no records of police reports, none of the relatives are registered and have no connections with radical religious movements.
Akbarjon’s “dangerous connections” could have arisen precisely in the last years of his life in Russia, when he was cut off from his family, security officials conclude. The source clarified that the police have no information about Akbarjon’s attempts to get into Syria, but did not rule out the existence of such information from the State Committee for National Security.
Let us remind you that the terrorist attack on April 3 in the St. Petersburg metro killed 14 people, including the suicide bomber himself, and more than 60 were injured. Two days after the explosion in St. Petersburg, eight people were detained and subsequently arrested on suspicion of recruiting suicide bombers. And on April 6, an apartment on Tovarishchesky Prospekt was stormed with an explosive device and residents whom investigators consider to be involved in the terrorist attack in the metro.
On April 3, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, Denis Chebykin, the administrator of several St. Petersburg news publics, was on his way to work. In the center of the hall on Vosstaniya Square stood the metro security inspector Albert Sibirskikh (he was later awarded for his competent actions). He looked nervous and focused. Chebykin saw next to the inspector “a dark brown leather bag, horizontal, with long handles.” Sibirskikh persistently drove away passers-by who were interested in what had happened and was waiting for something. Chebykin approached the inspector and asked if he needed help. He only rudely asked to “go about your business.” At 14:01 Denis took a photo and posted it to the popular public page “Road accidents and emergencies”, providing it with the following comment:
“There is an ownerless bag at Vosstaniya Metro Station, an inspector has already arrived with a sniff-sniff apparatus, there are no police, the place has not been fenced off.”
At 14:28 in the same community appeared information that Vosstaniya Square is closed to entry and exit. By that time, people had been evacuated from there, and they announced over the loudspeaker that the station was closed. At this time, student Marina Myaukina was going down the Spasskaya escalator, confusing it with Senna (the stations are located at the same interchange hub). Marina did not hear the announcement - she was wearing headphones. At 14:32 she received a call from a friend, with whom the girl agreed to meet at the Zvezdnaya station. Marina realized that she had gone down the wrong way and ran to Sennaya. When he came running, the train was already leaving. “The next station is the Technological Institute,” announced announcer Mikhail Bykov, the voice of the St. Petersburg subway. The driver Alexander Kaverin closed the doors. The train started moving.
Twenty seconds later, in car No. 8147, third from the head of the train, an explosion was heard and smoke began to creep out of the tunnel. It became difficult to breathe and Marina hurried upstairs. She ran up to the escalator attendant and shouted: “Why are you sitting here, people are suffocating there!” The attendant, like most people who found themselves at the station, did not understand what had happened.
At about 14:40, the seller of the spiritual and educational newspaper “As Salam” Rashid ( name has been changed. — Approx. ed.) stood near the "Sennaya". A Chechen ran up to him, grabbed a newspaper and shouted:
- What are you, an *** [idiot]?
- Why? - Rashid was surprised.
- Take her away, take her away! There the subway exploded! - the Chechen yelled.
Photo: Igor Zalyubovin Flowers near the Sennaya metro station
Five minutes to Tekhnolozhka
Around noon that day, Ulvi Fatullayev, a 21-year-old management student and heir to a napkin factory, left his parents' apartment on business. I went with my brother, as usual, by car. But right next to Akademicheskaya, a pedestrian was hit. There was a traffic jam and I had to take the subway. According to unconfirmed reports, around the same time, Akbar Jalilov parked his old Daewoo Nexia near Akademicheskaya. Ulvi boarded the second carriage of that train on Nevsky Prospekt - at the station he met an acquaintance, after which he went to study.
At the moment when the train started moving from Sennaya, Ulvi was listening to the song of the ATL group - “Dance”.
Words “Or buckshot will become plum pudding / A sad thought has flown into your head.” drowned out the sound of the explosion. At this sound, Ulvi turned around and saw a flash. Next two lines “About the fact that all that remains is to lie down under the shroud / And to sour for the last three days at your party” he didn’t hear either - they were drowned out by the screams. In the first seconds, Ulvi thought that something had broken on the train - and the explosion occurred for technical reasons. He took off his headphones. Sergey Krupov, frontman of ATL, continued to sing into nowhere at this time: “So let’s do without the lethal liturgy / After all, we have never seen worlds like this”.
After a few seconds the train slowed down. From several carriages at once, passengers called driver Alexander Kaverin via speakerphone. From the second carriage, a man shouted that the train was about to go off the rails. At this time, Kaverin reported the situation to the dispatcher. Then he decided to drive the train to the Technological Institute station.
The four and a half minutes from the moment of the explosion to Fatullayev’s Technological Institute station were the most terrible in his life. The woman standing next to Ulvi screamed. A couple of pensioners sitting opposite turned their heads towards the flash at the moment of the explosion, and then began to look somewhere to the side, trying not to pay attention to what was happening. They sank into their seats out of fear. The music went on and on: “After all, I’m lying there so terribly beautiful / The only pity is that I won’t get to the bottom of it.”
The pensioners were silent. The woman continued to scream. Two young guys ran to the window and tried to film what was happening on their phones. The lights in the third car went out, something was burning there and people were rushing about.
“Fuck it, dance / Dance right on my grave”, sang the voice in the player.
Fragments of a backpack, in which a fire extinguisher filled with explosives exploded, lay on the floor. Nearby is the head of Akbar Jalilov with his eyes closed. His body was torn into pieces.
Inside the explosion
The train arrived at the Technological Institute at approximately 14:38. Metro employees immediately ran to the carriage. One of them, Artem Oransky, was on duty at the station at that moment. He, like his fellow metro workers, refused to answer Snob’s questions, citing a non-disclosure agreement: “I can only say that there was real meat in the carriage.”
At the Ulvi station, Fatullayev got off the train and for the next few minutes he simply stood there, not understanding what to do next. “For technical reasons, the station is closed,” the voice cracked over the loudspeaker. Someone was carrying the victims out of the exploded carriage. Two metro workers extinguished a dying fire in a carriage.
The section from the third to the fourth doors suffered the most: parts of the roof sheathing and parts of the car were torn out. Below them lay several torn bodies.
— The area near the third doors was covered in fire extinguishing foam. On the floor at the back of the platform lay a head, with fragments of a backpack nearby. It was actually some kind of *** [horror]. There were pieces of human bodies and severed limbs everywhere.
Not counting Jalilov, there were fourteen people in the terrorist attack. 54 people were hospitalized with moderate and severe injuries. They tried to save two of them: 50-year-old Irina Medyantseva died in an ambulance, 21-year-old Dilbara Aliyeva died in the hospital on the night of April 4. The third victim (his name is unknown) died on April 12. The bodies of 11 people who died immediately were taken away in the evening. In total, according to official data, 102 people were injured in the terrorist attack.
When the wounded were taken out, Ulvi stood in a state of shock on the platform until a man approached him. He asked if everything was okay and took me to the escalator. Ulvi went upstairs, lit a cigarette and went to a familiar cafe. Then he called his brother Niyaz, told him about what had happened, and then sat in the cafe for several hours. In the evening Ulvi returned home. He decided not to tell his parents anything - his father had a heart condition.
Namaz in the back room
Photo: social network VKontakte Akbar Jalilov “Sushi Wok”, where Akbar Jalilov worked, is located on the main square of the city of Vsevolozhsk, located about 30 kilometers from St. Petersburg. On Saturday, April 8, a funeral meeting is being held in front of the cafe. Patriotic songs can be heard from the stage. Along the road there is a chain of buses with signs “Custom” and “Children”. The rally is already ending, pensioners with posters “Terror will not pass!”, “Russia is united!”, “Russia - you are a great country!” are seated on buses. Local journalists smoke in the empty square. They say that the rally went “about as usual”: “We arrived at 12, held a rally for an hour and left. The head of the city was angry, saying that ISIS call themselves horsemen, but in reality they are cowardly sheep.”
The leader of the council of deputies of one of the local municipal settlements told me that no one was forcibly brought to the rallies: “They sent down an offer from above to gather and speak. People agreed and liked the proposal. "United Russia organized everything and brought them."
The stage is already being assembled. From the speaker comes the song “Live” by Grigory Leps - it was used at anti-terrorist rallies throughout Russia. A local policeman stands with his wife near the stage. The wife is pushing the stroller. I ask the policeman if he is afraid to stand in the cordon in recent days and what he can do if a terrorist is discovered. The policeman looks at his wife, then at the stroller, then at me. He says that a Russian person always hopes that he will not explode. Therefore he is not afraid.
The policeman, head of the council of deputies and pensioners did not know that Akbar Jalilov had been working opposite the main square where the rally was taking place for two years.
Photo: Igor Zalyubovin Participant of the anti-terrorist rally in Vsevolozhsk An ethnic Uzbek, Jalilov was born in the Kyrgyz city of Osh in 1995. As a child, I was a quiet and calm child. In 2011, he received Russian citizenship. From that time on, he began to live in St. Petersburg and work with his father in a car repair shop - first on Vitebsky Prospekt, then on the Revolution Highway. In 2013, Akbar began working at Sushi Wok not far from the workshop - on Sredneokhtinsky Prospekt, 51. His then colleague Otabek Juraev told Snob about this. Juraev said that at that time Jalilov lived right in a workshop nearby on the Revolution Highway, where he continued to work as a tinsmith at night.
Akbar’s acquaintance Ismail Aliyev met him several times in the company of mutual friends in 2011-2012, when he worked in a car service center. According to him, Akbar was not interested in politics and religion and was going to get married. Another acquaintance of Akbar, who wished to remain anonymous, said that in 2013 they relaxed together a couple of times in one of the St. Petersburg cafes: they smoked hookah, drank, danced and met girls.
At the beginning of 2014, Jalilov moved from St. Petersburg to Vsevolozhsk, rented an apartment on Leningradskaya Street and got a job at Sushi Wok on Oktyabrsky Prospekt. He drove a used blue Daewoo Nexia (he left it on the day of the terrorist attack in the parking lot near the Akademicheskaya metro station). Amirkhan Salakhutdinov, who worked at the same Sushi Wok until the summer of 2014, characterizes him as a calm guy who loved cars most of all: Akbar was not interested in religion - he did not read prayer and did not attend the mosque.
In the summer of 2014, Jalilov quit his job at Sushi Wok to go home to his native Osh—at least that’s what he told Salakhutdinov and other colleagues. They did not meet again - Salakhutdinov also soon quit and left. In the fall, Olga (who asked not to use her last name - Ed.) got a job as an administrator at Sushi Wok, and by that time Jalilov was working there again - now as a senior cook. Olga claims that Akbar Jalilov was moderately sociable with everyone and knew how to joke. She characterizes him as a moderately religious person: “In his free time, he read prayer in the back room. But not five times a day, but as it turned out, when I was busy. He is not the type to quit his job and go pray. That is, this is not that kind of person, not that kind of person at all.” It turns out that Jalilov became interested in Islam in the summer of 2014. According to Olga’s recollections, he was upset that he could not keep his fast while working a 12-hour shift and working six days a week. According to her, Jalilov was practically not interested in politics - “in the kitchen they discussed the war in Ukraine and Syria in the spirit that people are suffering.”
Olga says that many Muslim migrants work at Sushi Wok. Many of them read prayer, fast, and try to attend the mosque. Previously, Olga took this calmly, but now she is “somewhat uneasy.” She talks about this in a low voice; an Uzbek spins rolls nearby:
— Nobody knows what they are talking about there, who they are friends with at other points. No one prys into their personal lives, and no one has the authority to pry. And in general, you know, working is so scary. “I’m not afraid for my own people,” Olga looks back at the sushi chef. - Although, I don’t know anything anymore.
Photo: Igor Zalyubovin Sushi Wok on Oktyabrsky Avenue In 2015, Jalilov quit smoking and grew a beard. He continued to work at the same Sushi Wok. Olga says that this year he flew home several times. At the same time, Jalilov’s brother Akhror said in an interview with RBC that he did not come home in 2015.
It is unknown where Akbar Jalilov went. At the end of 2015, Jalilov said that he had decided to get married, Olga recalls. After that, he quit and allegedly went home. According to several sources, on November 29, 2015, Jalilov flew not to Kyrgyzstan, but to Turkey. From there he returned 13 months later. RBC also reported on “a complaint sent to Jalilov’s place of registration,” where he and six other unnamed individuals are suspected of extremism. The complaint, according to the publication, was received on December 27, 2015. At the same time, in the circle of acquaintances, as two unnamed friends of Jalilov told Reuters, many believed that he had gone to Syria. According to RBC, Jalilov was deported from Turkey on December 27, 2016.
In February 2017, Akbar came home to Osh for two weeks. He told his family that he served in the Russian army. There was nothing unusual in his behavior - he played racing games on the computer, shared his plans for the future - he wanted to build an extension to his house and get married. I did not visit the mosque.
On March 3, 2017, Akbar Jalilov flew from Osh to Moscow. After some time he appeared in St. Petersburg.
Welcome to Okkervil
Photo: Igor Zalyubovin Door to an apartment on Tovarishchesky Avenue The long high-rise building on Tovarishchesky Avenue is located on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, in the Okkervil district. On the stand near the municipal district government there is the inscription “Welcome!” The area consists of Khrushchev and Brezhnev panels, the architectural dominant is a rusty Ferris wheel. Okkervil is one of the popular areas among migrants due to low housing prices. Natalya has been living here for a couple of years - on the same floor where Jalilov’s alleged accomplices lived.
— A young family lived in the apartment - a guy, a girl and a child. An elderly man also lived with them. The girl wore a hijab. In January, she left with the child, I haven’t seen the elderly man lately either,” Natalya said.
One of the detainees, Ibragim Ermatov, told the court that he had lived in this apartment since 2015, with his brother and his family. They left in January, and in return asked to shelter their fellow countrymen.
Another neighbor on the floor, a migrant from Central Asia, who refused to give his name, told Snob that recently only men had lived in the apartment. He could not say how many of them there were. The neighbors returned home after 11 pm and never said hello. In the photographs he identified several detainees and Akbar Jalilov himself. According to the migrant, he recently rode with Jalilov in an elevator. They were silent in the elevator.
On April 4 at five in the morning, residents of the 10th entrance heard screams and roars. After some time, the neighbors were taken out in handcuffs - Natalya saw three of them. A total of six people were arrested. At seven in the morning the police began knocking on all doors:
“Get ready quickly, take only what you need,” the operative shouted to Natalya and went to the next apartment.
Residents ran out into the street. Rumors spread that the house was mined. Natalya returned home only in the evening. Investigative actions, according to her, continued until late at night. Two more alleged acquaintances of Jalilov were detained in Moscow the next day.
At court hearings held on April 5, all eight were placed in custody until the beginning of June this year. None of them admitted their guilt. Shohista Karimova, a 46-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, cried and said that she did not understand how an F-1 grenade, a microcircuit and industrial detonators got into her apartment. Ibragim Ermatov said that he was shocked by Akbar’s act. Yusuf Mirzaalimov - that he did not see the explosives. Other detainees spoke in the same vein.
Apartment No. 109
Akbar Jalilov’s route is not reliably known. Immediately after the terrorist attack, several were proposed, but all of them were not confirmed. The first bomb was discovered at Vosstaniya Square at least at 13:50, and the explosion occurred at 14:31 at Sennaya, although it took about ten minutes to travel from one station to another. Dzhalilov either doubted, or confused his tracks, or something did not go according to plan. It was previously reported that they planned to detonate the bomb remotely and he had no intention of becoming a suicide bomber at all. This remains to be determined by the investigation. It is reliably known that Dzhalilov got into the metro at the Akademicheskaya station - where he, walking with a backpack and bag, was not noticed by a subway security officer who was playing on the phone.
We meet Ulvi Fatullayev near the Akademicheskaya metro station on a Saturday evening, six days after the terrorist attack. A couple of kilometers away, next to the neighboring Grazhdansky Prospekt metro station, Akbar Jalilov rented an apartment. Jalilov turned 22. Ulvi turned 21.
Ulvi comes to the meeting with his brother Niyaz. Fashionably dressed, they smoke at the entrance to the shopping center. Ulvi has dark circles under his eyes - he hasn't been sleeping well lately. We get into the car of Ulvi’s friend, Sasha, to get to Grazhdansky Avenue. They are interested in looking at the terrorist's apartment.
On the way, I ask Niyaz and Sasha how they feel about Jalilov. Sasha believes that they fooled him and promised him money. The guys argue with him - they say that a dead man doesn’t need money and “it can only be an idea.”
“Victim of circumstances,” says Sasha and turns into the yard.
Niyaz thinks that only lynching can atone for what Akbar did:
“We would give his relatives to those who lost their relatives.” That would be the fairest thing. So that they think next time! - says Niyaz.
“But violence begets violence,” I say. Ulvi is silent and looks out the window.
- How do they say it? - Niyaz thinks and looks at his older brother, as if looking for support. “Whoever comes to us with a sword will die from it.”
-What would you do if your brother died?
- I would find his relatives.
- Don't know. I would have done something. Bad. In reply.
We get out of the car. The apartment that Jalilov rented is on the second floor. The darkness of the rooms is visible through the loosely closed curtains. Niyaz comes to the door. We don't know the code. He pulls hard and the door swings open. I knock on the doors of several neighbors - no one wants to talk, a lot of journalists have already been here in a few days.
There is no “sealed” note on the door of apartment 109.
“Let’s call,” says Niyaz. He presses the button. The call is long and unpleasant.
- Do you think they’ll open it for you? - says Sasha. “It’s a pity that the neighbors don’t communicate.”
- What do you feel? - I ask.
“Some kind of shitty energy,” Sasha repeats. - And heartbeat.
- You know, it feels like something is going to happen. Do you have this? - asks Niyaz.
“From here, from this door, this man came out,” says Ulvi. “He could have taken your life.” Could ruin your whole life. And the life of your loved ones. He's already ruined it - just for someone else.
-Are you uncomfortable? Or scary? - I ask.
- Not that it's unpleasant. Resentment, and at the same moment anger. Why do people suffer? Why did so many people die and end up in hospitals? Because of some strongly religious nation? Well, not nations, associations of people... - he stops mid-sentence.
The guys go to the stairs. Ulvi continues to stand and look at the door. He looks as if he saw a ghost.
Life correspondent Semyon Pegov talks about why the new generation of jihad is more dangerous than ISIS, and what the alleged terrorist from Kyrgyzstan who blew up the St. Petersburg metro has in common with the Tsarnaev brothers.
Akbarzhon Jalilov - according to one version, it was a twenty-two-year-old native of Kyrgyzstan who carried out the St. Petersburg terrorist attack - has a page on the VKontakte social network, even two.
Judging by the groups in which Akbar (short for Akbarzhon) is a member, he was interested in what attracts almost all typical guys - cool cars, fights without rules, clubs.
In one of the photos he is sitting imposingly at a table in a bowling alley, in another session he is smoking a hookah with teenage boys his age.
On a more recent page, the young man even put a creative and humorous avatar with a cat with a sign in its paws saying “shit in the slippers.”
No Wahhabi beard, no cap, no Islamic robe. As they say, the guy is “on Adidas”, “on sports”.
I didn’t go to the section for long, so the description from the coach is stingy: “I worked out for myself, I didn’t have much success, and I wasn’t particularly strong physically, I was modest and cheerful.”
Judging by the audio recordings added to the page, musical interests are quite secular - from the acidic Prodigy to the good-natured Katy Perry.
The only information on his page that may cause some suspicion is his subscription to the House of Islam group. At first glance, there is nothing outstanding about it either.
Are there not enough Muslim communities of interest?
However, in reality, the group of sites “House of Islam” (IslamHouse.com) is a serious propaganda project of a near-Wahhabi sense.
The headquarters of the religious foundation is located in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), and these guys were blessed for their “educational” work by the Islamic theologian Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah ibn Baz.
Yes, I've never heard of this either. But a superficial acquaintance revealed that this same Ibn Baz in the nineties was considered the main supporter of Wahhabism in the country and for six years (1993–1999) was the Supreme Mufti of Saudi Arabia.
It was during this period that the Wahhabi Saudis, led by Khattab, actively helped religious radicals fight against federal troops in Chechnya, including organizing terrorist attacks in southern Russia. A massive influx of mercenaries from Saudi Arabia occurred during the first campaign.
However, in the twenty-first century, you don’t even need to go to Wahhabi mosques to get caught by recruiters from Al-Qaeda* or ISIS*. Fanatics have long mastered the Internet and attract supporters - precisely through such communities on social networks.
In general, the House of Islam group is the only link that somehow connects twenty-two-year-old Akbar Jalilov with extremism. Overall, he comes across as an ordinary guy with a healthy attitude towards life.
Here we come to the most important thing. This is the ideology of the new generation of jihad.
A person who expresses his commitment to radical Islam in everyday life causes rejection and suspicion among normal people.
Therefore, to be more effective, new jihadists are encouraged to disguise themselves as moderate and secular citizens.
The scheme was personally developed by Bin Laden's press secretary, Abu Musab Assuri. He himself organized several terrorist attacks - in Barcelona and London. In the photo from the nineties, he is an al-Qaeda ideologist in a fashionable denim combination; nothing gives away a Wahhabi about him.
The second postulate of the so-called new generation jihad is the complete autonomy of the performer from major terrorist organizations.
Modern tracking methods, according to Assuri, are so advanced that it is too unsafe for suicide bombers to communicate with each other and receive tasks from above.
There is a risk that the terrorist action will fail, which means the jihadist goal will not be achieved.
Therefore, Assuri invites his followers to act independently; intelligence is almost powerless against autonomy. The network can be opened, but you can’t get into every teenager’s head.
Assuri's most famous students are the Tsarnaev brothers, who organized the Boston Marathon bombing.
Now we too are faced with the jihad of a new generation. Akbar Jalilov acted according to the textbook.
* Organizations are banned in Russia by decision of the Supreme Court.
Investigative authorities are reconstructing, minute by minute, the tragic events that took place in the metro. The name of the alleged terrorist has been established - he is a native of Central Asia who received Russian citizenship six years ago. Now investigators are identifying his accomplices - there is information that the terrorist had connections with the ISIS group.
The “Infernal Machine” was blown up in the metro by 22-year-old Akbardzhon Jalilov, a native of Central Asia and a citizen of Russia. This is official, everything else is just a version. Here is one of them, which has not yet been refuted by anyone: the terrorist acted alone in the subway.
A man with a small bag on his shoulder enters the subway at two o'clock. In the lobby of the Ploshchad Vosstaniya station - people who came to St. Petersburg from the Moscow station descend here - the terrorist leaves a bag with a bomb, but does not board the train. He continues on his way.
In an inconspicuous bag, at first glance, there is an ordinary fire extinguisher, but inside there is a bomb with metal balls. And here it is not yet clear: either the terrorist’s accomplice must blow it up, or there is a clockwork inside. The tragedy is averted. An ownerless item is noticed by a metro employee during his duty patrol.
“He secured the place in time, called specialists in time. As a result, a terrorist attack was prevented,” said Vladimir Garyugin, head of the St. Petersburg metro.
At this time, the terrorist goes to the Mayakovskaya station and gets to Gostiny Dvor. And again the transition - to the blue line, Nevsky Prospekt station. The whole journey takes no longer than 15 minutes. The next stop is the same “Sennaya Square”.
The St. Petersburg subway carries more than two million passengers per day. At the height of the working day, the metro is usually freer. But not here: the stretch from Sennaya to Tekhnolozhka is the very center of the city. There are always a lot of passengers on this section.
Calculation of the maximum number of victims. The train enters a tunnel and there is an explosion. 300 grams of TNT and a confined space.
“For an open space, the explosion should not be so big and the situation would not be so damaging. If this is in a closed carriage, which we observed, you saw what happened: the doors were squeezed out, the glass. Therefore, 300 grams for a closed room is a fairly serious equivalent of TNT,” said Sergei Goncharov, president of the association of veterans of the Alpha anti-terror unit.
The shock of the first seconds gives way to horror when the train finally leaves the dark tunnel onto the illuminated platform. There is a crush in the fourth car. The twisted doors are jammed, and passengers trapped inside are trying in vain to open them. Someone is pushing out the glass of the emergency exits. People climb over, jump out, fall out, get up and run away from the carriage without looking back.
“It’s very good that the train didn’t stop and it was flying at speed. I thought - just to get there. We arrived, it was impossible to get out through the door, and we crawled through the openings that were broken. Then, when I turned around, there were a huge number of people lying there,” says Natalya Kirillova.
Those remaining inside are unable to rise. In the chaos of what is happening, nothing can be discerned except cries of despair and pleas for help. Those who came to the aid of the wounded see a terrible picture of a carriage destroyed by an explosion, in which many could no longer be saved.
“I was there too, I pulled it out. This cannot be conveyed - the woman was covered in blood, I pulled her out; the guy was screaming loudly, covered in blood, kicking this door,” says Rimma Boyko.
Rescuers arrive at the scene seven minutes later. They were on their way to a smoke call. What we saw on the spot is still before our eyes.
“It was like chaos, complete chaos, confusion, no one knew what to do. But the operational services of the metro and the police quickly responded, they began to slowly remove people, those who were able to move on their own, and then we began to help,” says the head of the guard of the fire and rescue department, Ivan Shishkin.
The wounded and dead are carried to the platform, lifted up, and from there to hospitals by helicopters and ambulances. Two people die on the way. Severe injuries from the shock wave and flame, but worst of all - shrapnel. Doctors spent the entire night removing metal peas from the bodies of the victims. Large, like hail, they pierced right through and left no chance for those who stood very close.
“A metal ball, and an explosive device was stuffed with them, there were hundreds of them, it looked like metal, it was obviously homemade, the diameter was about 8 millimeters. In addition, there were self-tapping screws and metal fragments,” said the director of the Emergency Medicine Research Institute. I. Dzhanelidze Valery Parfenov.
The characteristic destructive elements, as well as the fact that the DNA of the same person was found both in the carriage and on a bag with a bomb left in the lobby - all this, according to a TASS agency source, suggests that the explosion was committed by a suicide bomber .
“Judging by the nature of the injuries, it was a suicide bomber. The explosive device was attached to his body, or was in his backpack, or he even held it in his hands, but at the level of his stomach. This is evidenced by the fact that everyone who was nearby had characteristic injuries in the abdominal area,” a source told TASS.
Little is known about the identity of Akbarjon Jalilov - it is him who investigators call the perpetrator of the terrorist attack. He did not arouse suspicion among his friends. He worked in one of the sushi bars in the Northern capital, and then suddenly disappeared. There is evidence that the future terrorist purchased false passports several times.
“The guy is prepared, either he was given instructions over the phone or over the Internet. See how he covered his tracks. This is elementary: every change of passports means covering up tracks. This should raise suspicion. That means someone helped him,” says security expert Sergei Petrov.
Sources from the Kommersant newspaper indirectly confirm Jalilov’s connections with the ISIS group.
“The special services knew about the preparation of the action in St. Petersburg, but their information was far from complete. It was provided by a Russian who collaborated with the Islamic State terrorist organization banned in our country and was detained after returning from Syria. This person, according to Kommersant’s interlocutor, occupied the lowest level in the hierarchy of militants, so he knew some of the members of the sabotage group sent to Russia. At the same time, even with his contactees, he only maintained telephone contact. Having thus determined the mobile numbers of the alleged terrorists and pierced them, the operatives found out that all the SIM cards were purchased in the markets and were not tied to real people, so they were forced to limit themselves to wiretapping the militants’ conversations, hoping to eventually find them themselves or at least find out their details plans,” the article says.
The first details of the investigation were reported to Vladimir Putin the night before at a closed meeting at the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg.
Meanwhile, what happened continues to acquire more and more new details. The power of the explosive device is being determined. The first figure - 300 grams of TNT - can be tripled. And it is not yet clear whether the terrorist himself detonated the bomb or whether someone remotely helped him explode.
