The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don on 27 May handed down two verdicts against residents of Daghestan in cases related to terrorism.
Daghestani resident Albina Magomedova was found guilty of financing militants of the terrorist organisation Islamic State and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. According to the prosecution, in 2022 she transferred ₽818,000 ($12,000) to members of the organisation. She pleaded guilty.
Magomedova was born in August 1978 in the village of Babayurt in Daghestan’s Babayurt district, according to an entry in Rosfinmonitoring’s (Federal Financial Monitoring Service) register of terrorists and extremists. Information about her alleged involvement in terrorism was added to the register in November 2024.
On the same day, the Southern District Military Court also sentenced four other residents of Daghestan — Magomed Khanilaev, Albert Yusufov, Magomed Magomedov, and Ragim Korkmasov.
They received prison terms ranging from eight to 23 years. According to the court, while serving sentences in a penal colony in Daghestan in 2018, the defendants joined a terrorist community called Dzhamaat and spread its ideology among other prisoners.
‘Each of the defendants adhered to the community’s common principles and established rules of conduct, carried out functional duties to support the terrorist community’s activities, including spreading extremist and terrorist ideology within the correctional facility, searching for and secretly storing extremist and terrorist materials, banned extremist literature and video materials containing calls for extremist and terrorist activity, conducting classes among convicts on the study of radical Islamist ideology and the practice of terrorism, engaging in propaganda and justification of terrorism, and urging participants attending these classes to spread terrorist ideology and recruit new followers after their release from prison’, the court’s statement read.
In addition, Khanilaev allegedly became the leader of the group in April 2018. He received the harshest sentence — 23 years in a penal colony.
The three other members of the community — Korkmasov, Magomedov and Yusufov — were convicted of participating in a terrorist community and sentenced to between eight and 10 years in a maximum-security penal colony.
According to entries in Rosfinmonitoring’s register, Khanilaev was born in 1993 and was added to the register on 12 October 2021. Korkmasov, born in 1990, was added in February 2021. Magomedov, born in 1989, was added to the register in May that year. Yusufov was born on 8 October 1998 and added to the register in July 2021. All four are natives of Daghestan.
The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don regularly hears criminal cases involving terrorism and extremism charges, including cases against residents of republics in the North Caucasus. Human rights organisations and defence lawyers have repeatedly raised concerns about the transparency of such proceedings and alleged pressure on defendants. Russian authorities reject those allegations.
