Tag Archives: Islamic Terrorism

Germany says suspected Islamist detained over soccer attack

Football Soccer - Borussia Dortmund v AS Monaco - UEFA Champions League Quarter Final First Leg - Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany - 11/4/17 Police with the Borussia Dortmund team bus after an explosion near their hotel before the game

By Tilman Blasshofer and Matthias Inverardi

KARLSRUHE/DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) – German authorities arrested a suspected Islamist on Wednesday in connection with an attack on a bus carrying players of one of the country’s top soccer teams, a spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said she was “appalled” by Tuesday evening’s attack on the Borussia Dortmund bus, in which Spanish defender Marc Bartra was injured.

The incident forced a 24-hour postponement of the team’s high-profile clash with AS Monaco, and officials said security had been stepped up for that game and a second Champions League quarter-final in Germany on Wednesday, between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

Ralf Jaeger, interior minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia which includes Dortmund, said the investigation was looking “in all directions”, and it was unclear if one or several attackers were involved.

The spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutors, who handle probes into suspected terrorism, said investigators had found three letters near the scene of the attack, all with the same content suggesting a possible Islamist motive.

Spokeswoman Frauke Koehler said the letters referred to the use of Tornado reconnaissance planes in Syria, which Germany has deployed as part of the military campaign against Islamic State, and also called for the closure of the U.S. military base at Ramstein in western Germany.

She also noted an online claim of responsibility by an anti-fascist group, but said there was serious doubt about its validity.

Investigators had identified two suspects from the “Islamist scene”, searched their apartments and detained one man, she said.

Football Soccer - Borussia Dortmund v AS Monaco - UEFA Champions League Quarter Final First Leg - Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany

Forensic experts search the area where the explosion occurred. Soccer – Borussia Dortmund v AS Monaco – UEFA Champions League Quarter Final First Leg – Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany – 11/4/17 Forensic experts search the area where the explosion occured Reuters / Kai Pfaffenbach Livepic

DEFENDER INJURED

The blasts smashed windows on the bus carrying the players to the stadium for the match against AS Monaco. Bartra was operated on for a broken bone in his right wrist and shrapnel in his arm, a team spokesman said.

“The chancellor was last night, like people in Dortmund, like millions everywhere, appalled by the attack on the BVB team bus,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told a news conference.

“One can only be relieved that the consequences were not worse,” he said, praising Dortmund fans for offering accommodation to AS Monaco fans after the postponement.

Bartra, 26, joined Dortmund for 8 million euros ($8.5 million) last year from Barcelona, after coming through the Catalan club’s youth system. He has made 12 appearances for the Spanish national team.

European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, said there had been no specific intelligence regarding any threat to any of Wednesday’s Champions League fixtures, which also include a match in Spain between Atletico Madrid and England’s Leicester City.

UEFA “is reviewing the security arrangements for tonight’s matches and security procedures will be enhanced accordingly wherever needed,” it said, asking supporters to allow extra time for the possibility of enhanced checks.

Police in Munich said they were deploying an additional 80 officers and strengthening security around hotels and key routes for the match there.

The blasts revived memories of Islamist militant attacks in Paris in November 2015 whose targets included a stadium where France were playing Germany in a soccer friendly.

Security is among the issues at the heart of Germany’s parliamentary election on Sept. 24, a tight battle in which Merkel is running for a fourth term. In December, a Tunisian man killed 12 people when he plowed a truck through a Berlin Christmas market.

(Reporting by Joseph Nasr, Paul Carrel, Anneli Palmen and Jens Hack; Writing by Mark Trevelyan)

U.S.-backed forces push back Islamic State in Raqqa campaign – officials

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters shoot a drone they said belonged to Islamic State fighters on the bank of the Euphrates river, west of Raqqa city, Syria April 8, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said

By John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-backed forces fighting Islamic State in Syria advanced to within 2 km (1 mile) of a key stronghold near the jihadist group’s de facto capital of Raqqa on Tuesday, and a counter-attack by the militants was repulsed, officials said.

The multi-phased campaign by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by air strikes and military advisers from a U.S.-led coalition, ultimately aims to oust Islamic State from Raqqa. IS is also losing ground to U.S.-backed offensives in Iraq.

Officials have given different estimates for how long the campaign will take, and the assault on Raqqa itself appears to have been delayed, after one high-ranking military official said it would begin at the start of April.

Meanwhile the immediate goal is to capture the city of Tabqa, some 40 km (25 miles) west of Raqqa, and a nearby dam on the Euphrates river, an official for the Raqqa campaign said.

“For now, the target in front of our eyes is the city of Tabqa, and the dam,” Gharib Rasho, a media official for the campaign, told Reuters.

He said the SDF had taken control of around 60 percent of the dam, after capturing its northern entrance last month. The SDF is made up of Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces, including a large contingent from the powerful Kurdish YPG militia.

On Tuesday, SDF forces thwarted an Islamic State counter-attack near Tabqa and advanced to within 2 km of the city from the east, an SDF statement said.

Rasho said Islamic State had been trying to break a siege the SDF had imposed on Tabqa by attacking both from inside and from areas to its south which Islamic State still holds.

It is unclear how many Islamic State insurgents remain in Tabqa, but Rasho said they were “few”, based on the estimates of residents fleeing the city.

Thousands of residents have left in recent weeks, though tens of thousands are thought to remain in Tabqa.

The militants were using car bombs, mortar fire and suicide attackers – methods similar to those the jihadists have employed to defend their urban bastion of Mosul in Iraq, he said.

WEEKS OR MONTHS?

Launched in November, the SDF offensive aims initially to isolate Raqqa, Islamic State’s main urban base in Syria. Forces have advanced on the city from the north, east and west. Encircling and capturing Tabqa is a major part of the campaign as the city and dam comprise a strategic base for IS.

The focus on Tabqa does not rule out a simultaneous assault on Raqqa, campaign officials have said.

But that assault appears already to have been delayed as Islamic State resistance keeps forces busy around Tabqa.

The head of the YPG said last month the Raqqa assault would begin at the start of April, and would take no more than a few weeks. The commander of the Raqqa operation, also a YPG official, later said the offensive to capture the city would likely last several months.

U.S. coalition spokesman Colonel John Dorrian said Washington’s partners on the ground would choose when to move in on Raqqa. “Ultimately we are isolating Raqqa and we’re going to, at a time of our partner’s choosing, move in and liberate that city from Daesh (Islamic State),” he said in a statement.

“This is an important task. It’s the equivalent in Syria of what’s being done to eliminate the enemy in Mosul.”

The parallel U.S.-backed Iraqi offensive to drive Islamic State out of Mosul has also taken longer than the Iraqi government predicted. Fighting there rages on between the armed forces and jihadists who are holed up in its Old City.

(Additional reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh in Baghdad and Ellen Francis in Beirut; Editing by Michael Georgy/Mark Heinrich)

Suspect in Stockholm truck attack admits terrorist crime

Policemen guard next to the court before the detention hearing of suspect in Friday's attack in Stockholm, Sweden April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Anna Ringstrom

By Anna Ringstrom and Johannes Hellstrom

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A failed asylum-seeker accused of ramming a truck into a Stockholm crowd last week, killing four people, has confessed to committing a terrorist crime, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Uzbekistan man Rakhmat Akilov, wanted for deportation at the time of Friday’s attack, made his first court appearance, entering the heavily guarded courtroom with a green sweater over his head and flanked by his lawyer and a translator.

Police say they believe the 39-year-old hijacked a beer truck and drove it into a busy pedestrian street in the Swedish capital before crashing into a department store.

Two Swedes, a British man and a Belgian woman were killed in the attack. Fifteen were injured. Eight people remain in hospital, including two in intensive care.

The attack has shattered any sense Swedes had of being insulated from the militant violence that has hit other parts of Europe, but has prompted defiance from Prime Minister Stefan Lofven who says Sweden will remain an open, tolerant society.

Akilov, who was asked by the judge to remove the sweater from his head, made no comment at the start of the hearing. His lawyer, Johan Eriksson, told the court that his client had admitted the crime. The judge then ordered the hearing to proceed behind closed doors.

Eriksson later told reporters outside the court that Akilov has described his motives to authorities, but the judge had ordered the lawyer not to discuss details of the case in public.

“He has not just confessed. He has provided information, he is answering questions,” Eriksson said.

Akilov was arrested just hours after the truck attack on the highest level of suspicion in the Swedish legal system. He had already been wanted by police for failing to comply with a deportation order after being denied permanent residency.

The judge on Tuesday remanded Akilov in custody for a month. Police have said it could take up to a year to complete the initial investigation into the attack.

Police say Akilov has expressed sympathies with extremist organisations. Security services have said that he had figured in intelligence reports but they had not viewed him as a militant threat.

A Facebook page appearing to belong to him showed he was following a group called “Friends of Libya and Syria”, dedicated to exposing “terrorism of the imperialistic financial capitals” of the United States, Britain and Arab “dictatorships”.

Legal documents show Akilov had asked for Eriksson to be replaced by a Sunni Muslim lawyer, but the court denied his request.

“We have a good relationship and we are working together in this case,” Eriksson said on Tuesday.

Sweden’s prosecution authority said on Tuesday it had revoked the arrest of a second, unidentified suspect in connection with the truck attack.

However, this man would remain in custody due to an earlier decision that he be expelled from Sweden, the authority said.

“According to the prosecutor, the suspicions have weakened and there is, therefore, no ground to apply for a detention order,” it said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Mark Bendeich)

Russian authorities hunt metro bomber accomplices; several detained

People mourn next to a memorial site for the victims of a blast in St. Petersburg metro, at Tekhnologicheskiy institut metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

By Polina Nikolskaya

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) – Russian authorities detained several people in St Petersburg on Thursday after finding an explosive device in one residential building and said they were investigating suspected accomplices of the man behind this week’s deadly metro bombing.

Bomb disposal experts made the explosive device found at the apartment building safe after evacuating people living in flats on two stairwells.

“We were told: the house is mined, get out quickly,” one woman, who only gave her name as Tatiana and lives in the building, told Reuters.

Another resident, who gave his name only as Anatoly, said he had seen police detain four young men occupying an eighth floor apartment next to his own.

St Petersburg is still reeling after a bomb ripped through the city’s metro on Monday, killing 14 people and injuring 50.

The attack, which authorities say was carried out by a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen, has put renewed focus on the large number of emigres from mostly Muslim central Asian states, who have moved to Russia to work.

Russia’s state investigative committee, a body with sweeping powers that is looking into the bomber’s background, said in a statement it was looking into the backgrounds of people it suspected of being accomplices.

It said it had identified several people of central Asian origin who had been in touch with Akbarzhon Jalilov, the main suspect. A search of the suspects’ homes had turned up objects that were important for the investigation, it said.

Russian news agency Interfax reported that investigators had detained several people suspected of being Jalilov’s accomplices.

It was unclear if those detained at the site of Thursday’s bomb scare were the suspected accomplices identified by the investigative committee.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Alexander Winning in Moscow; Writing by Sujata Rao; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

The enemy within: Russia faces different Islamist threat with metro bombing

Russian president Vladimir Putin puts flowers down outside Tekhnologicheskiy Institut metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia. REUTERS/Grigory Duko

By Maria Tsvetkova and Denis Pinchuk

MOSCOW/ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – Akbarzhon Jalilov, the man suspected of blowing up a Russian metro train, represents a new wave of radical Islamists who blend into local society away from existing jihadist movements – making it harder for security forces to stop their attacks.

His pages on the Russian equivalent of Facebook show Jalilov’s interest in Wahabbism, a conservative and hardline branch of Islam. But they give no indication that he might resort to violence, presenting a picture of a typical young man leading a largely secular life.

Fourteen people were killed and 50 wounded in the suicide bomb attack on Monday on the metro carriage in St Petersburg. Russian state investigators said the suspected bomber was Jalilov, a 23-year-old born in the mainly Muslim ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

If radical Islamism was indeed his motive, he will be distinct from two previous waves of attackers – those from Russia’s restive North Caucasus region who fought successive rebellions against Moscow; and a later group who went to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State group.

The new generation may take inspiration or instruction from people involved in those previous fights, and are drawn from the same Muslim communities.

However, they are not directly linked to those militant organizations and have not created the trail of arrest warrants, tapped phone calls, travel documents and monitored border crossings on which security forces usually rely to keep tabs on violent Islamist radicals.

“It’s a completely different kind, a different level of terrorist threat from the one that Russian security services are used to dealing with,” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian expert on the intelligence services.

Security services typically look for an organization and financing network behind a terror attack, he said, but those may not exist in cases such as the metro bombing. “It’s very difficult to counter things like this,” Soldatov said.

British police have run into similar problems investigating the case of Khalid Masood, who sped across Westminster Bridge in a car last month, killing three pedestrians and injuring dozens more, before stabbing a policeman to death. Shot dead by police, Masood also had no known links to jihadist groups.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Jalilov is typical of millions of young Muslim men living in Russia. There was nothing apparent from his background and lifestyle that made him stand out for the authorities.

An ethnic Uzbek from the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh, he moved with his father to St Petersburg for work several years ago, according to neighbors in Osh.

In Russia, he worked with his father as a panel beater in a car repair shop, they said. An acquaintance from St Petersburg said Jalilov had worked for about a year in a chain of sushi restaurants. A second acquaintance said he was a fan of sambo, a form of martial arts popular in Russia.

He owned a Daewoo car, according to a source in the Russian authorities, and was registered at an apartment in a quiet, upscale neighborhood of suburban St Petersburg.

A person who said he was a representative of the apartment’s owner said Jalilov had never lived there, but that he had granted him with a temporary registration at the flat as a favor to some mutual acquaintances.

Jalilov’s page on VKontake, a Russian social media website, has photographs showing him wearing stylish Western dress, in a restaurant with friends and smoking a hookah pipe. His listed interests included a pop music radio station and mixed-martial arts. His page had a link to the home page of boxer Mike Tyson.

But he also had an interest in religion: the page had links to a website in Russian called “I love Islam” which features quotations from the Koran, and another called IslamHouse.com, which said it aimed to help people get to know Islam.

Another VKontakte page which belonged to Jalilov included links to a site featuring the sayings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century preacher on whose teaching Wahabbism is based.

AVENGING SYRIA

Security officials and people involved in radical Islam say the earlier generations of violent Islamists are now largely out of the picture.

Militant in the North Caucasus are hounded by security forces, pushed into forest hideouts, and too pre-occupied with staying alive to be able to launch attacks on Russian cities.

Meanwhile, the thousands of people from Russia and ex-Soviet republics who fought alongside Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are on the radar of Russian intelligence. Tipped off by Turkish intelligence which tracks jihadists’ movements into and out of Syria, Russia arrests them when they return home or prevents them from entering the country.

An attack near Moscow last year may have marked the emergence of the new generation of radicals.

Usman Murdalov, 21, and his friend Sulim Israilov, 18 traveled from their home in Chechnya, in the north Caucasus, to a Moscow suburb, armed themselves with axes, and attacked a traffic police post. They were shot dead.

Their families said they had no idea they were involved in radical Islamism. But in a video posted online a day later, they professed loyalty to Islamic State, and made reference to the Russian military intervention in Syria.

“We are calling this a revenge operation, revenge because you are killing our brothers, because you are killing our brothers and sisters every day in Iraq and Syria,” one of the two attackers said in the video.

Islamic State, its grip on territory in Syria and Iraq weakening, has switched its focus to inspiring sympathizers elsewhere. Avenging Russia for its role in the Syria conflict has been a prominent theme on the group’s social media sites.

Shortly after Russia launched its military operation in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, the group released a video where it threatened to attack Russia very soon, described Russians as kafirs, or unbelievers, and said that “the blood will spill like an ocean”.

RECRUITING GROUND

That propaganda finds fertile ground inside Russia among the millions of Muslims from Russia’s North Caucasus and Muslim migrants from ex-Soviet central Asia. Many do menial, low-paid jobs; they are regularly stopped by police for document checks, and they often face racial discrimination.

Two men from central Asia who fought alongside Islamist radicals in Syria described how they had been radicalized while they were working in Russia.

One, who gave his name as Boburjan, spoke to Reuters in a jail in Osh in 2015 where he was serving a sentence for his activities in Syria. He said he had come to Moscow to work on a construction site. At a Moscow mosque, he was approached by a man who showed him videos of Middle Eastern conflicts.

“That man said: ‘Look, infidels are killing us, they rape our women and children, and we must defend our fellow Muslims’,” he said.

The second man said he was working as a cook in an Uzbek restaurant in central Moscow. “Some of the guys I knew said: ‘We must go and wage jihad’,” said the 22-year-old man, who gave his name as Khalijan.

(additional reporting by Svetlana Reiter, Polina Nikolskaya, Olzhas Auyezov, Hulkar Isamova and Olga Dzyubenko; writing by Christian Lowe; editing by David Stamp)

Two Florida men plead guilty to planning to help Islamic State

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) – Two Florida men have pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State by planning to travel to Syria to join the militant group, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

Both men are U.S. citizens and live in Palm Beach County.

Dayne Antani Christian, 32, and Darren Arness Jackson, 51, each pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to provide material support to Islamic State. Jackson made his plea on Tuesday and Christian pleaded last week, each to U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg.

Each man faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted on the conspiracy charges. Christian also pleaded guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and faces up to 10 yeas in prison if convicted for that charge.

The two men, along with co-defendant Gregory Hubbard, 53, were arrested by the FBI, after Jackson last July drove Hubbard and an FBI confidential informant to Miami International Airport for a flight to Germany.

Court records show that prosecutors claim that Hubbard bought a ticket for Berlin and planned to travel by train to Turkey and then cross into Syria to join Islamic State.

A July 2016 indictment returned by a grand jury charged all three men with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

That indictment says that at least as far back as July 2015 and continuing until their arrests, Christian and Jackson told Hubbard and the FBI confidential informant about supporting Islamic State and of a desire to travel to Syria for that purpose, the Justice Department’s press statement issued on Tuesday shows.

The same indictment says Christian and Jackson provided firearms and training in a remote area of Palm Beach County so that Hubbard and the FBI source could learn to shoot.

All three have been detained since their arrests. Hubbard is scheduled for trial on Oct. 30.

Forces backed by the United States, Turkey and Russia are advancing on Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. Iraqi government forces also retook several Iraqi cities last year and the eastern part of the city of Mosul.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Scott Malone and James Dalgleish)

New Jersey teen pleads guilty in plot to assassinate the Pope

Pope Francis celebrates his final mass of his visit to the United States at the Festival of Families on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania September 27, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – A New Jersey teen pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to terrorists in what media called an ISIS-inspired effort to kill Pope Francis in 2015 during a public Mass in Philadelphia, according to a statement by federal prosecutors.

Santos Colon, 17, admitted on Monday in a federal court in Camden, New Jersey, that he attempted to conspire with a sniper to shoot the Pope during his visit in Philadelphia and set off explosive devices in the surrounding areas.

Colon engaged with someone he thought would be the sniper from June 30 to August 14, 2015, but the person was actually an undercover FBI employee, according to prosecutors. The attack did not take place, and FBI agents arrested Colon in 2015.

“Colon engaged in target reconnaissance with an FBI confidential source and instructed the source to purchase materials to make explosive devices,” prosecutors said in a statement on Monday.

A U.S. citizen from Lindenwold, New Jersey, Colon was charged as an adult with one count of attempting to provide material support to terrorists on Monday and faces up to 15 years in prison.

What motivated the attempted attack was not immediately known to Reuters. NBC News reported that prosecutors said Colon admitted the terror plot was inspired by the Islamic State.

Prosecutors and the defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Colon also faces a fine of $250,000, or twice the amount of any financial gain or loss from the offense, prosecutors said. No date has been set for sentencing and the investigation is ongoing.

The Pope visited Philadelphia on Sept. 26 and 27, 2015, to hold a public Mass, attracting hundreds of thousands of people during his biggest event in the United States.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Boko Haram video denies claims of starvation in northeast Nigeria forest

KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) – The faction of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram led by Abubakar Shekau released a video on Tuesday denying that fighters are dying of hunger in its northeast Nigerian forest base.

Nigeria’s military last week said it was “ransacking” territory it said it had recaptured from Boko Haram in the hunt for Shekau, who leads one of two main branches of the jihadist group. It also said he might be hiding in the Sambisa forest.

Large parts of northeast Nigeria, particularly in Borno state, remain under threat from Boko Haram as suicide bombings and gun attacks have increased in the region since the end of the rainy season late last year.

“There is no food that we lack in this forest of Sambisa. It is not true that we have run out of food supply and that we are being killed by hunger,” said an unidentified man with a rifle, flanked by others carrying guns, in the five-minute video.

Nigeria’s army said in December that it had pushed Boko Haram out of the Sambisa forest, a vast former colonial game reserve that was the group’s stronghold, in an operation to reclaim territory lost to the Islamist insurgency since 2009.

Boko Haram split last year, with one faction led by Shekau operating from the forest and the other, allied to Islamic State and led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, based in the Lake Chad region.

“We urge all members to be one hundred percent loyal to him [Shekau],” said the man in the video. “It is not true that you killed Shekau,” he said, referring to previous claims by the Nigerian military that he had been fatally wounded.

Shekau did not appear in the video, which was circulated on social media on Tuesday.

Boko Haram has killed more than 15,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes during its insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state governed by a strict interpretation of sharia law in Africa’s most populous nation.

(Reporting by Garba Muhammad; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Andrew Bolton)

Russian metro bomb suspect a Muslim born in central Asia: investigators

People leave candles in memory of victims of a blast in St.Petersburg metro, at Tekhnologicheskiy institut metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor

By Denis Pinchuk and Hulkar Isamova

OSH, Kyrgyzstan/ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – A Russian suicide bomber originally from mainly Muslim Kyrgyzstan detonated the explosives in a St Petersburg train carriage that killed 14 people and wounded 50, authorities said on Tuesday.

The suspect had radical Islamist links, Russian media cited law enforcement officials as saying, raising the possibility Monday’s attack could have been inspired by Islamic State, which has not struck a major city in Russia before. So far, no-one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Kyrgyz officials identified the suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in the city of Osh in 1995, and Russian officials confirmed his identity, saying he had also left a bomb found at another metro station before it went off.

Biographical details pieced together from social media and Russian officials suggested Jalilov was an fairly typical young St Petersburg resident with an interest in Islam as well as pop music and martial arts but no obvious links to militants.

His uncle, Eminzhon Jalilov, told Reuters by telephone that his nephew was a mosque-attending Muslim, but that he was “not a fanatic”.

The explosion in the middle of Monday afternoon occurred when the train was in a tunnel deep underground, amplifying the force of the blast. The carriage door was blown off, and witnesses described seeing injured passengers with bloodied and blackened bodies.

State investigative authorities said fragments of the body of the suspect had been found among the dead, indicating that he was a suicide bomber.

“From the genetic evidence and the surveillance cameras there is reason to believe that the person behind the terrorist act in the train carriage was the same one who left a bag with an explosive device at the Ploshchad Vosstaniya station,” they said in a statement.

Russia has been on alert against attacks in reprisal for its military intervention in Syria, where Moscow’s forces have been supporting troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad against Western-backed armed groups as well as the hardline Islamic State (IS) which grew out of the conflict.

IS, now under attack by all sides in Syria’s multi-faceted war, has repeatedly threatened revenge and been linked to recent bombings elsewhere in Europe.

If it is confirmed that the metro bomber was linked to radical Islamists, it could provoke anger among some Russians at Moscow’s decision to intervene in Syria, a year before an election which President Vladimir Putin is expected to win.

PREVIOUS BOMBING

Officials said they were treating the blast as an act of terrorism, but there was no official confirmation of any link to Islamist radicals.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was cynical to say the bombing in St Petersburg was revenge for Russia’s role in Syria. He said the attack showed that Moscow needed to press on with its fight against global terrorism.

A page on social media site VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, belonging to someone with the same name and year of birth as Jalilov, included photos of him relaxing with friends in a bar, smoking from a hookah pipe. He was dressed in jackets and a baseball cap.

A Reuters reporter visited a house in Osh, southern Kyrgyzstan, which neighbors said was the family home of Jalilov. The home, a modest but well-maintained one-storey brick building, was empty.

Neighbors said Jalilov was from a family of ethnic Uzbeks, and that while they knew his parents they had not seen the young man for years. They said his father worked as a panel-beater in a car repair shop.

“They are a very good family. Always friendly, never argue. And they have good kids,” one of the neighbors, Mirkomil Akhmadaliyev, told Reuters.

Later on Tuesday, Jalilov’s mother appeared but refused to speak to reporters, saying she needed to retrieve something and hurry back to a security service office.

Osh is part of the Fergana Valley, a fertile strip of land that straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which is mainly populated by ethnic Uzbeks. It has a tradition of Islamist radicalism and hundreds of people have set out from the area to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

A blast at a nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve that killed 39 people involved a suspect from the same part of central Asia. The bomber in that attack said he had been acting under the direction of IS militants in Syria.

Jalilov’s uncle said his nephew moved to Russia in 2012. He is registered at an upscale apartment in the north of St Petersburg, according to a source in the Russian authorities, and he has a Daewoo Nexia car registered in his name.

A man who said he was a representative of the apartment’s owner told Reuters that Jalilov had never actually lived there, but had given the address as his residence in official documents.

His VKontakte page included links to a site featuring sayings from Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an eighteenth century preacher on whose teaching Wahhabism, a conservative and hardline branch of Islam, is based. But there were no links to Islamist militants.

PUTIN VISIT “NOTEWORTHY”

Russia’s health minister Veronika Skvortsova said on Tuesday that the death toll from the blast, which hit at 2:40 p.m. (1140 GMT), had risen to 14, with 50 wounded.

St Petersburg television showed footage of the corpse of a man they said was the perpetrator. The man, with a close-cropped beard, resembled footage of a young man wearing a blue beanie hat and a jacket with a fur-lined hood captured on closed circuit television identified by Russian media as a suspect.

“It has been ascertained that an explosive device could have been detonated by a man, fragments of whose body were found in the third carriage of the train,” Russia’s state investigative committee said in a statement.

“The man has been identified but his identity will not be disclosed for now in the interests of the investigation,” the statement added.

President Putin, who was visiting St Petersburg at the time of the blast, went to the site late on Monday.

The Kremlin said it was “noteworthy” that Putin had been in the city. It did not elaborate, but said such attacks on Russia were a challenge for every citizen, including the president.

Two years ago, Islamic State said it had brought down a plane carrying Russian tourists home from a Red Sea resort. All 224 people on board the flight were killed.

Monday’s blast raised security fears beyond Russian frontiers. France, which has itself suffered a series of attacks, announced additional security measures in Paris.

(Additional reporting by Svetlana Reiter, Katya Golubkova, Polina Nikolskaya, Sujata Rao, Alexander Winning and Maria Tsvetkova in MOSCOW and Olga Dzyubenko in BISHKEK, writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Christian Lowe and Sonya Hepinstall)

Germany deporting more ‘potential attackers’ after Berlin attack

Flowers and candles are pictured at the site where on December 19, 2016 a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near Kurfuerstendamm avenue in Berlin, Germany, January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany has deported 10 potential attackers since January as part of a tougher approach toward failed asylum seekers after one of them killed 12 people in an attack on a Berlin Christmas market, security sources said on Thursday.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and other top officials have been pushing for quicker deportations of those denied asylum, while working with Morocco, Tunisia and other countries to speed up the repatriation process.

Tunisian Anis Amri, a supporter of Islamic State, attacked the Berlin market in December after being denied asylum. He was shot dead by Italian police days later.

Shortly after the incident, German’s Joint Terrorism Prevention Centre (GTAZ), reviewed the open cases of all other “potential attackers” like Amri, the sources said.

“A total of 10 potential attackers have since been successfully deported in a joint effort with the affected German states,” said one of the sources.

The suspected militants were sent back to mainly North African countries, the sources said, without providing details.

The change in approach was agreed by de Maiziere and Justice Minister Heiko Maas at a meeting on Jan. 10, where both men agreed that the Amri case must not be repeated.

In Amri’s case, one of the obstacles to physically deporting him was Tunisia’s failure to issue replacement identification papers, despite the availability of finger- and handprints.

This month German Chancellor Angela Merkel secured a promise from Tunisia to take back 1,500 rejected Tunisian asylum seekers, with those who agreed to leave voluntarily eligible to receive government aid. Germany also offered Tunisia 250 million euros in development aid.

Merkel, who will seek a fourth term as chancellor in September, has come under fire for allowing more than one million refugees to enter Germany over the past two years.

De Maiziere vowed on Tuesday to continue pushing for legislative changes that would make it easier to detain and deport potential attackers following the Amri case. One proposed law also calls for use of electronic tags.

The security sources said state prosecutors in the past had sought to exhaust opportunities to prosecute potential attackers in Germany for various other infractions, but this had proven difficult and time-consuming.

The sources did not provide details on the 10 individuals deported or say whether they were related to the Amri case. German authorities have arrested at least two individuals who had contact with Amri before the December attack.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Gareth Jones)