15 July 2024
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said it has prevented a terrorist attack on an Orthodox church in the North Caucasian Republic of Adygea.
On 11 July, the FSB announced that they had detained an 18-year-old from a Central Asian country who was a member of an ‘international terrorist organisation’.
Russian state news agency TASS cited the FSB as saying that the detainee had been preparing an attack on an Orthodox church in the capital of Adygea, Maykop, with the intention of killing its clergy and guards.
‘The terrorist […] conducted reconnaissance of the area, drew up an attack plan, purchased the necessary components and made homemade incendiary devices’, TASS quoted.
A criminal case has been opened against the suspect on charges of organising a terrorist attack.
TASS reported that the detainee was found to have ‘prohibited materials of an international terrorist organisation, a flag of a terrorist organisation, a knife and components of an incendiary device’.
TASS also published footage of the arrest and interrogation of the suspect, in which the 18-year-old describes how he planned the attack.
‘We took gasoline, wanted to climb through the fence and set fire to the church. I watched videos of people with this flag, […] the flag of the Islamic State, and people said “why are they setting fire to your mosques and you are not doing anything” ’, the detainee says in the video.
‘If there was a guard, we wanted to kill him. I initially said that I would stab him. They wanted to pour gasoline and open the door’, he adds.
No information has been made public regarding other participants in the planned attack.
On 23 June, at least 20 people were killed and another 16 hospitalised in attacks on churches and a synagogue in Derbent and Makhachkala.
Since the attacks, security measures have been strengthened in the North Caucasus, as Russian officials have increasingly frequently referred to radicalism and extremism in the region.
On July 9, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov held a meeting on the fight against terrorism in the North Caucasus.
He stated that measures had been developed to ‘increase the efficiency’ of cooperation between federal agencies and those in the republics on the subject of combating terrorism.
