Turkey offers support to Moscow's suspicions about the possible role of a foreign state in the Crocus City Hall massacre, claimed by ISIS. “Such actions have a sponsor,” said the spokesman for Turkey's ruling AKP party, Omer Celik. His words are in line with the doubts raised by Vladimir Putin, according to whom the attack was actually carried out by "Islamic extremists", but the investigations must aim to unmask the "instigators".
The Russian president evoked Kiev's possible responsibility. The statements of the Federal Investigative Committee are along the same lines, but so far, like Putin, it has refrained from directly accusing the Ukrainian government, and has announced that the investigations continue to "verify" a possible involvement of the Ukrainian secret services "in the organization and the financing" of the action. But spokespersons for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party said they were convinced that ISIS "is not capable of carrying out such an organization on its own". An attack like the one in Moscow "cannot happen without the support of some country's intelligence", added Celik.
The Russian investigation into the attack, which according to an updated toll caused 144 deaths and over 180 injuries - of which 69 are still hospitalized - has so far led to the arrests of nine men, all Tajiks or of Tajik origin, including the four accused of physically carrying out the attack. The Basmanny District Court of Moscow today turned the arrest of the ninth suspect, Nazrimad Lutfulloi, 24, into arrest. His story is different from that of the other suspects. The young man was stopped, while he was near the concert hall, 24 hours after the massacre for having thrown a fit when the officers asked him to show his documents. But now the judge has accused him of having participated in the financing of terrorists. According to Lutfulloi's lawyer, Margarita Khoreva, his client partially admitted his guilt.
Tajikistan's security services are also collaborating in the investigation. Fifteen people were stopped in the capital Dushanbe and "links to the people who carried out the attack on Crocus City Hall" are being verified, local investigative sources told Russian news agency Ria Novosti. For now the accusations against them concern the preparation of attacks in Tajikistan during the holidays for the Persian New Year, Nowruz, which began on the spring equinox, March 20. The arrests, the same sources underlined, took place before that date, and therefore before the massacre in Moscow, on 22 March.
Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front, a new case opens in the ongoing conflict between Russia and the West, after Moscow vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that aimed to extend the mandate of the commission that monitors violations to sanctions by North Korea. A decision that comes after accusations leveled by the US and other Western countries against Pyongyang of supplying Russia with armaments and ammunition to be used in the conflict in Ukraine.
Moscow's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said U.N. sanctions against North Korea "did not help improve the security situation in the region." Currently, he continued, a new "escalation is taking place in the region, caused by the increasingly aggressive military activities of the United States and its allies." Moscow, however, will continue to "develop friendly relations" with North Korea, Zakharova added.
South Korea reacted by calling Russia's veto "irresponsible". While China, which abstained in the Security Council vote, said it opposed what it called "blind support for sanctions", assessing, in agreement with Russia, that they cannot help resolve "the current situation on the Korean peninsula".
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