MOSCOW, May 29 (Itar-Tass) — The Moscow City Court on Tuesday sentenced Timur Akubekov to ten years in a maximum regime penitentiary for involvement in the conspiracy to stage an act of terror in Red Square overnight to January 1, 2011. He was found guilty of attempted terrorist attack, illegal acquisition of explosives and banditry.
The court also restricted his freedom by two years after serving the sentence.
The trial was held under special procedure, as Akubekov had signed a plea bargain agreement. The defendant asked for behind-closed-doors trial due to his concerns about the safety of his relatives.
Akubekov's role was to arrange the transportation to Red Square of the perpetrators of the terrorist attack, Zeinab Suyunova and Zavzhat Daudova. He had to take their mobile phone and money which gang members had passed to them, show them the places where they had to blow themselves up and monitor the terrorist attacks. The information about the results had to be passed by Shamil Paizulayev, another gang member.
The investigators ascertained that Suyunova was to have been the first to set off a bomb while Daudova had to await the arrival of law-enforcement personnel, approach them and then blow herself up.
On December 30 and 31, Akubekov sent SMS-messages to Suyunova and Daudova to coordinate the time of leaving the hotel, and called a taxi to collect them at 20:00, Moscow time, on December 2010.
However, he did not know that Suyunova and Daudova had been accommodated at the wrong hotel, and so he sent the taxi to the proper address. Then he sent them SMS-messages telling he would be waiting for them at a cafe near the Kitai-Gorod subway station, at 20:30, Moscow time on December 31.
As they were waiting for the taxi, Suyunova and Daudova strapped explosives to themselves but Daudova's bomb self-detonated, killing her.
Suyunova lost the fuse to her bomb. She also lost her mobile phone. "Having no idea where Red Square was located, she was unable to contact Akubekov for further instructions," Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said earlier.
She tried to go to Kizlyar by bus but was detained after document check in Volgograd on January 2, 2011.
Akubekov, upon learning from Paizulayev where the suicide bomber had lived, went there by taxi, but fled upon seeing law-enforcement agents. He was detained on January 28, 2011 in Makhachkala.
Suyunova was charged with banditry, attempted terrorist attack, illegal keeping of weapons, ammunition, explosives and explosive devices, and illegal making of explosive devices by organized group. She was sentenced to ten years in jail.