Russia’s Security Head Says US Shares Blame for Deadly Concert Hall Attack

Flowers and toys are placed on the roadside in front of the burnt-out Crocus City Hall following a deadly attack on the concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, March 26, 2024. (Reuters)
Flowers and toys are placed on the roadside in front of the burnt-out Crocus City Hall following a deadly attack on the concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, March 26, 2024. (Reuters)
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Russia’s Security Head Says US Shares Blame for Deadly Concert Hall Attack

Flowers and toys are placed on the roadside in front of the burnt-out Crocus City Hall following a deadly attack on the concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, March 26, 2024. (Reuters)
Flowers and toys are placed on the roadside in front of the burnt-out Crocus City Hall following a deadly attack on the concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, March 26, 2024. (Reuters)

The head of Russia's national security council on Wednesday contended that the United States shares blame for the attack by gunmen on a Moscow concert hall that killed 145 people, even though a branch of the ISIS group has claimed responsibility.

Since the March 22 attack at the Crocus City Hall, the deadliest on Russian soil in two decades, Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have repeatedly claimed, without presenting evidence, that it was organized by Ukraine, which has been fighting a Russian invasion for more than two years.

An affiliate of ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and Kyiv has consistently denied involvement.

"They are trying to impose on us that the terrorist act was committed not by the Kyiv regime, but by supporters of radical ideology, perhaps members of the Afghan branch of ISIS," security council head Nikolai Patrushev said at a meeting in the Kazakhstan capital Astana of security councils of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The SCO is a nine-country regional security and economic bloc that includes China, India and Iran.

"However, it is much more important to quickly establish who is the customer and sponsor of this monstrous crime. Its traces lead to the Ukrainian special services. But everyone knows that the Kyiv regime is not independent and is completely controlled by the United States," Patrushev said.

Four suspected gunmen were captured the day after the attack in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine. Putin and other officials claim that the gunmen had arranged for passage into Ukraine. Six other suspected accomplices have also been arrested.

Russia’s emergencies ministry gave the death toll in the attack as 144, but children’s rights ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova said Wednesday that a sixth child injured in the attack had died.

The attack came two weeks after the United States Embassy in Russia issued a warning that it was monitoring reports of planned terrorist attacks on public targets. The US State Department said information about the planned attacks was passed on to Russian officials.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday declined comment in a conference call on a report in the Washington Post that US officials had specifically identified Crocus City Hall as a potential target, saying that was a matter for security services.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova disdained the report, telling journalists at a briefing that "I would really like to ask you to receive factual material on this topic from the American side. That is, when and to whom did they transmit this information."

Also Wednesday, the Russian prosecutor-general's office sent information requests to the US, Germany, France and Cyprus over Western countries’ potential involvement in terrorist attacks on Russia, state news agency Tass reported.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."