Ingushetia resident sentenced to three years and two months in prison in Crocus City Hall case
A resident of Ingushetia, Mansur Tochiev, has been sentenced to three years and two months in prison in a Crocus City Hall case.
Information about the sentence was published on Friday in the Telegram channel Rozysk Ingushetia, which is linked to the security services.
According to the channel, the court initially sentenced Tochiev to three years in a penal colony and a fine of ₽20,000 ($260), but after an appeal by the prosecutor’s office, the prison term was increased by two months.
Tochiev, the channel wrote, had originally been detained as part of the investigation into the attack at the Crocus City Hall venue near Moscow. He was considered a presumed member of the religious brotherhood of the Batalkhadzhintsy. Representatives of the security services claimed that Tochiev, together with several other residents of Ingushetia, had helped Batyr Kulaev — whom the investigation named as involved in supplying weapons to the perpetrators of the attack — to evade arrest.
In the materials that were allegedly presented to the court, the security services showed a pistol, a grenade, and a patch bearing the inscription ‘Freedom or Paradise’. According to these reports, the patch supposedly belongs to the BOBR Akhmat unit (Batalkhadzhinsky Rapid Response Detachment), which was sent from Chechnya to fight in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine. There is no confirmation that these items actually belonged to Tochiev.
During a search at Tochiev’s home in the village of Surkhakhi, a grenade, a firearm, and ammunition were allegedly seized. He was also allegedly found to have correspondence with leaders of the Batalkhadzhintsy, from which it followed that the leaders of the organisation helped those who assisted the perpetrators of the Crocus attack to flee abroad.
The sentence handed down to Tochiev, however, was below the minimum limit stipulated by Russian criminal code, which provides for a prison term of six to eight years. The reasons for this decision were not reflected in the reports on the verdict.
Tochiev was detained at the end of 2024, along with Magomed Santaliev, Makhmud Kartoev, and Khusen Kulaev. According to the security services, all four allegedly assisted Kulaev.
Other residents of Ingushetia — named as Khusein Medov, Dzhabrail Aushev and Khavazh-Bagaudin Aliyev — also helped supply the fighters with weapons. One of them, according to the security services, was killed during a special operation, though his identity has not been publicly revealed.
According to one version, the Batalkhadzhintsy may have appeared in the Crocus case due to the initiative of regional security services. The investigation also accuses natives of Daghestan of involvement in providing weapons to the fighters.
The attack at Crocus City Hall took place on 22 March 2024. 145 people were killed, including six children. Responsibility was claimed by Wilayat Khorasan, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State. The Russian authorities have stated that Ukraine may have been involved in the attack, though Kyiv has categorically denied this.
The Batalkhadzhintsy are a religious group in Ingushetia whose members consider themselves followers of the Sufi Sheikh Batal-Khadzhi Belkhoroev, who lived at the turn of the 19th century. It is one of the most influential and closed communities in Ingushetia, with up to 20,000 members.
The persecution of the Batalkhadzhintsy began soon after the 2019 killing in Moscow of the head of the Ingushetian Centre for Combating Extremism, Ibragim Eldzharkiev. The crime is linked to a blood feud for Ibragim Belkhoroev, the leader of the brotherhood and great-grandson of Sheikh Batal-Khadzhi, who had been killed by the security services.
In 2023, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) added the ‘armed wing of the followers of Batal-Khadzhi’ to the list of terrorist organisations.
In January 2025, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow ordered the arrest of Ramazan Padiev and Batukhan Tochiev, who were linked to the Batalkhadzhintsy. They are accused of assisting a suspect in the murder of the head of the chemical defence forces, General Igor Kirillov — according to the investigation, they provided the organiser of the attack with a flat.
Elizaveta Chukharova
