Calls grew in Russia on Monday for tough punishment for those behind the concert hall attack that killed more than 130 people as authorities combed through the burned-out ruins of the entertainment complex and an Orthodox priest blessed the venue.
Four men accused of carrying out a terrorist attack appeared in court on Sunday night and showed signs of being severely beaten. Civil liberties groups cited this as a sign that Russia's poor human rights record under President Vladimir Putin was about to get worse.
Prime Minister of Russia Michael Mishustin he said the investigation was still ongoing but promised that “the perpetrators will be punished, they do not deserve mercy”.
Former president Dmitry Medvedevnow deputy head of Russia's Security Council, urged the authorities to “kill them all”.
Friday night's attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow's western suburbs left 137 dead and more than 180 injured, proving to be Russia's deadliest in years. A total of 97 people remained hospitalized, officials said.
As they mowed down the concertgoers with gunfire, the assailants set the massive concert hall on fire and the resulting fire caused the roof to collapse.
The search operation will continue until at least Tuesday afternoon, officials said. A Russian Orthodox priest officiated at the site on Monday, blessing a makeshift memorial with incense.
An affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, and US intelligence backed their claims. French president Emmanuel Macronspeaking on a trip to French Guiana, he said France has information pointing to “an IS entity” as responsible for the Moscow attack.
But a representative of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov declined to assign responsibility, urging reporters on Monday to wait for the results of the Russia investigation. He also declined to comment on reports that the US warned authorities in Moscow on March 7 of a possible terrorist attack, saying any such information is confidential.
The four suspects were identified in Russian media as Tajik nationals. At least two of the suspects have pleaded guilty, court officials said, although their circumstances raise questions about whether their statements were coerced.
The men were identified as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32. Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, 30; Shamsidin Fariduni, 25; and Mukhammadsobir Faizov, 19. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Russia's Federal Security Service said seven other suspects had been arrested. Three of them appeared in court on Monday, unharmed, and were remanded in custody on terrorism charges. The fate of others remained unclear.
Russian media reported that the four were tortured during interrogation. Mirzoyev, Rachabalizoda and Fariduni showed signs of severe bruising, including swollen faces. Mirzoyev had a plastic bag still hanging around his neck. Rachabalizoda had a heavily bandaged ear. Russian media reported on Saturday that one suspect had his ear cut off during interrogation. The Associated Press The report or videos purporting to show this could not be verified.
Faizov, wearing a hospital gown, appeared in court in a wheelchair, accompanied by medical staff and sat with his eyes closed. He appeared to have multiple cuts.
Peskov declined to comment on the treatment of the suspects.
Medvedev, Russia's president from 2008-12, had particularly harsh comments about them.
“They've been caught. Congratulations to all who chased them. Should they be killed? It should. And it will happen,” he wrote on his Telegram page. “But it's more important to kill everyone involved. All. Those who paid, those who sympathized, those who helped. Let's kill them all.”
Margarita Simonianhead of the state-funded RT TV channel, shared photos of the bruised and swollen faces of the four men on X, formerly Twitter.
He said even the death penalty – currently banned in Russia – would be “too easy” a punishment.
Instead, he said, they would have to face “a lifetime of hard labor somewhere underground, also living there, without a chance to ever see light, with bread and water, forbidden to talk and with a not-very-human escort.”
Russian human rights defenders have condemned violence against men.
Team Against Torture, a prominent group that advocates for police brutality, said in a statement that the guilty should face severe punishment, but “brutality should not be the answer to brutality.”
He said the value of any testimony obtained through torture is “critically low” and “if the government allows the torture of terror suspects, it can also allow illegal violence against other citizens.”
Net Freedoms, another Russian group focused on free speech cases, said Medvedev's remarks, as well as Putin's recent call for security services to “punish traitors without limitation, wherever they are,” were made with background “show torture of prisoners … effectively authorizes extrajudicial killings and instructs security forces on how to treat enemies”.
“We are seeing the possible beginning of the new Great Terror,” said Net Freedoms, referring to the mass repressions by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The group predicts more police brutality against suspects in terror-related cases and an increase in violent crimes against immigrants.
Abuse of suspects by law enforcement and security agencies is nothing new, he said Sergey Davidis of the human rights group Memorial.
“We know about torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war, we know about mass torture of those accused of terrorism, high treason and other crimes, especially those investigated by the Federal Security Service. Here, it was made public for the first time,” Davidis said.
The parade of beaten suspects could reflect authorities' desire to show a muscular response to try to defuse any criticism of their failure to prevent the attack, he said.
It was a major embarrassment for Putin and came less than a week after he cemented his rule of Russia for another six years in a vote that followed the harshest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet era.
Many on Russian social media questioned how the authorities and their massive security apparatus that actively monitors, pressures and prosecutes critics failed to prevent the attack despite the US warning.
Citing the treatment of the suspects, David said AP that “we can assume that it was made public deliberately to show the seriousness of the state's response”.
“People are not satisfied with this situation when such a huge number of law enforcement officers have failed to prevent such an attack and are showing the harsh reaction to stop these charges against them,” he said.
The fact that the security forces did not hide their methods was a “bad sign”, he said.
Islamic State, which fought Russian forces that intervened in Syria's civil war, has long targeted the country. In a statement published by the band's Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan said it carried out an attack in Krasnogorsk, the Moscow suburb where the concert hall is located.
In October 2015, a bomb planted by the Islamic State brought down a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of whom were Russian holidaymakers returning from Egypt.
The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, has claimed responsibility for many attacks in Russia's volatile Caucasus and elsewhere in recent years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
This story was originally published by Associated Press.
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