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Russian student sentenced for trying to join IS convoyed to penitentiary

Karaulova will serve three years and four months in jail
Varvara Karaulova (Alexandra Ivanova after full name change)  Dmitry Serebryakov/TASS
Varvara Karaulova (Alexandra Ivanova after full name change)
© Dmitry Serebryakov/TASS

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. Former student of Moscow Lomonosov State University, Varvara Karaulova (Alexandra Ivanova after full name change), who was sentenced to 4.5 years in jail for an attempt to join the Islamic State terrorist grouping in Syria, has been convoyed to a penitentiary.

TASS received the information from Karaulova’s lawyer Sergei Badamshin.

"We learned today that Varya [the pet name derived from Varvara - TASS] had been convoyed to the penitentiary but we don’t know which one so far," he said, adding that Karaulova’s lawyers and family asked the officials to place her to a penal colony near Moscow for instance, the female colony in the Mozhaisk district to the West of Moscow.

On May 27, 2015, Varvara Karaulova, then a student at Moscow University’s school of philosophy took a flight from Moscow to Istanbul, concealing the fact from her parents. The people who met her at the airport in Turkey took her to a safe apartment in the town of Kilis.

Security service agents and the police detained her later for an attempt to cross the Turkish-Syrian border illegally.

Her father managed to bring her back home on June 12, 2015. The court authorized her arrest on October 28 and official charges were issued to her on November 10.

The Moscow circuit military court sentenced Karaulova to 4.5 years in a general penal colony on December 22, 2016. The judges deduced the fourteen months she had spent at a center for pretrial investigations from her jail term.

Thus, Karaulova will serve three years and four months in jail.

The court did not find it possible to pass a suspended sentence on her. The judge said while reading the defendant, who acted out of her own free will, communicated with the Islamic State militants, tipping them on the steps taken by the FSB state security service agents, and trained herself for an attempt to flee Russia, to join the terrorist grouping and to build a new state along with her thinks-alike.

While doing all this, the girl was in full control of her actions. "She planned to go to Syria for joining combat actions there with clear understanding this meant involvement in terrorist activities, the sentence said.