Russia Arrests Another Suspect in Deadly Concert Hall Attack

FILED - 25 March 2024, Russia, Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video conference with the heads of the government, regions, special services and law enforcement agencies on measures taken after the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert complex. Photo: -/Kremlin/dpa
FILED - 25 March 2024, Russia, Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video conference with the heads of the government, regions, special services and law enforcement agencies on measures taken after the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert complex. Photo: -/Kremlin/dpa
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Russia Arrests Another Suspect in Deadly Concert Hall Attack

FILED - 25 March 2024, Russia, Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video conference with the heads of the government, regions, special services and law enforcement agencies on measures taken after the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert complex. Photo: -/Kremlin/dpa
FILED - 25 March 2024, Russia, Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video conference with the heads of the government, regions, special services and law enforcement agencies on measures taken after the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert complex. Photo: -/Kremlin/dpa

A Moscow court has detained another suspect as an accomplice in the attack by gunmen on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed 144 people in March, the Moscow City Courts Telegram channel said Saturday.

Dzhumokhon Kurbonov, a citizen of Tajikistan, is accused of providing the attackers with means of communication and financing. The judge at Moscow's Basmanny District Court ruled that Kurbonov would be kept in custody until May 22 pending investigation and trial, The Associated Press reported.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said Kurbonov was reportedly detained on April 11 for 15 days on the administrative charge of petty hooliganism. Independent Russian media outlet Mediazona noted that this is a common practice used by Russian security forces to hold a person in custody while a criminal case is prepared against them.
Twelve defendants have been arrested in the case, including four who allegedly carried out the attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue, according to RIA Novosti.
Those four appeared in the same Moscow court at the end of March on terrorism charges and showed signs of severe beatings. One appeared to be barely conscious during the hearing. The court ordered that the men, all of whom were identified in the media as citizens of Tajikistan, also be held in custody until May 22.
A faction of ISIS has claimed responsibility for the massacre in which gunmen shot people who were waiting for a show by a popular rock band and then set the building on fire. But Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have persistently claimed, without presenting evidence, that Ukraine and the West had a role in the attack.
Ukraine denies involvement and its officials claim that Moscow is pushing the allegation as a pretext to intensify its fighting in Ukraine.



Homeland Insecurity: Expelled Afghans Seek Swift Return to Pakistan

Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File
Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File
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Homeland Insecurity: Expelled Afghans Seek Swift Return to Pakistan

Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File
Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File

Pakistan says it has expelled more than a million Afghans in the past two years, yet many have quickly attempted to return -- preferring to take their chances dodging the law than struggle for existence in a homeland some had never even seen before.

"Going back there would be sentencing my family to death," said Hayatullah, a 46-year-old Afghan deported via the Torkham border crossing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in early 2024.

Since April and a renewed deportation drive, some 200,000 Afghans have spilled over the two main border crossings from Pakistan, entering on trucks loaded with hastily packed belongings, reported AFP.

But they carry little hope of starting over in the impoverished country, where girls are banned from school after primary level.

Hayatullah, a pseudonym, returned to Pakistan a month after being deported, travelling around 800 kilometers (500 miles) south to the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan, because for him, life in Afghanistan "had come to a standstill".

He paid a bribe to cross the Chaman frontier, "like all the day laborers who regularly travel across the border to work on the other side".

His wife and three children -- including daughters, aged 16 and 18, who would be denied education in Afghanistan -- had managed to avoid arrest and deportation.

Relative security

Hayatullah moved the family to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and a region mostly populated by Pashtuns -- the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

"Compared to Islamabad, the police here don't harass us as much," he said.

The only province governed by the opposition party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan -- who is now in prison and in open conflict with the federal government -- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is considered a refuge of relative security for Afghans.

Samad Khan, a 38-year-old Afghan who also spoke using a pseudonym, also chose to relocate his family to Peshawar.

Born in eastern Pakistan's Lahore city, he set foot in Afghanistan for the first time on April 22 -- the day he was deported.

"We have no relatives in Afghanistan, and there's no sign of life. There's no work, no income, and the Taliban are extremely strict," he said.

At first, he tried to find work in a country where 85 percent of the population lives on less than one dollar a day, but after a few weeks he instead found a way back to Pakistan.

"I paid 50,000 rupees (around $180) to an Afghan truck driver," he said, using one of his Pakistani employees' ID cards to cross the border.

He rushed back to Lahore to bundle his belongings and wife and two children -- who had been left behind -- into a vehicle, and moved to Peshawar.

"I started a second-hand shoe business with the support of a friend. The police here don't harass us like they do in Lahore, and the overall environment is much better," he told AFP.

- 'Challenging' reintegration -

It's hard to say how many Afghans have returned, as data is scarce.

Government sources, eager to blame the country's problems on supporters Khan, claim that hundreds of thousands of Afghans are already back and settled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa -- figures that cannot be independently verified.

Migrant rights defenders in Pakistan say they've heard of such returns, but insist the numbers are limited.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) told AFP that "some Afghans who were returned have subsequently chosen to remigrate to Pakistan".

"When individuals return to areas with limited access to basic services and livelihood opportunities, reintegration can be challenging," said Avand Azeez Agha, communications officer for the UN agency in Kabul.

They might move on again, he said, "as people seek sustainable opportunities".