Russian FSB releases new video of Crocus City Hall suspects’ interrogation
The Russian FSB has released new video from the interrogations of the four main suspects in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. The clips were included in a segment on the state news network Channel One on Sunday evening.
In the footage, the suspects say that they were instructed to carry out the attack by a person named Sayfullo and that they planned to flee to Ukraine immediately after the shooting.
The first suspect shown in the segment is Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, who appeared at his arraignment on March 24 covered in bruises and with what appeared to be pieces of a plastic bag around his neck. Asked in the new footage what the group planned to do following the attack, he tells his interrogator: “[Go] towards Kyiv.”
The second clip shows suspect Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, who was shown having his ear cut off and forced into his mouth in an earlier interrogation video that circulated online. In the newly released footage, he says: “Sayfullo told us to go to Ukraine, to Kyiv. And there we’d be given a million rubles [$10,810].”
The next video shows suspect Muhammadsobir Fayzov, who was brought into court on a stretcher two days after the attack. He says in the new clip that each of the attackers was promised one million rubles, and that they were to be met at the Ukrainian border by people who would “help [them] cross the border and get to Kyiv.”
The last video shows suspect Shamsidin Fariduni, who was shown being electrocuted in a video released online the day after the attack. “He told us, ‘Go towards Kyiv, and when you reach the border, abandon your car somewhere near the border and call me, and I’ll help you from there,’” he says in the new footage.
Channel One also reported Sunday that Russia’s intelligence services have determined that the territory around the border villages of Chuikivka and Sopych in Ukraine’s Sumy was demined in preparation for the attackers to cross the border. This has not been independently confirmed.
Additionally, the news segment showed photos containing the Ukrainian flag that were purportedly found on the suspects’ phones. According to Radio Svoboda, at least one of the images also appears on the stock photo site Depositphotos under the search term “Ukrainian army.”