ROSTOV-ON-DON, September 18. /TASS/. The North Caucasus District Military court has found Tatyana Karpenko and Natalya Grishina guilty of plotting a terrorist attack on a shopping mall in the city of Rostov-on-Don, handing both long prison sentences, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom.

Karpenko has been sentenced to 14.5 years behind bars, while Grishina has been handed nine years in a high-security penal colony.

Karpenko has been found guilty of plotting a terrorist attack, as well as of recruiting another person to carry out a terrorist attack and illegally purchasing explosive substances. Apart from a prison sentence, Grishina has also sentenced to one year of restricted freedom for illegally possessing explosive substances and making preparations for a terrorist attack.

The court considered evidence provided by the prosecutor, which proved that from October 2015 to February 2016, the defendants had been working on preparations for a terrorist attack in a public place in Rostov-on-Don. According to investigators, in order to carry out their plan, they persuaded another woman, named Viktoria Semenova, to become a suicide bomber and execute an attack in one of the city’s shopping malls. They also put together an improvised explosive device.