Russian court convicts woman for terror attack attempt

PanARMENIAN.Net - A court has sentenced Zeinap Suyunova to ten years in prison after finding her guilty of attempting to detonate herself on Moscow’s central Red Square over a year ago, Russia's Investigative Committee said on Friday, May 18, RIA Novosti reported.

“According to the scenario, Suyunova was to have become the direct perpetrator of the terrorist attack,” Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said. “The court sentenced Suyunova to 10 years in prison in a medium-security prison.”

According to investigators, Suyunova and her accomplice, Zavzhat Daudova, the wife of gang leader Ibragimkhalil Daudov, were to have arrived in downtown Moscow on December 31, 2010, at about 8:00 pm Moscow time and blown themselves up during the 2011 New Year celebrations on Red Square, but failed.

Daudova died when she was trying to fasten an explosive device on body when the two women were in a hotel.

“Suyunova failed to perpetrate the terrorist attack as well. She lost the switch from her homemade explosive device, which made it impossible to blow the device up,” Markin said.

“Having also lost her mobile phone and without knowing where Red Square was in Moscow, she failed to contact the gang members to receive specific instructions from gang leader Daudov. She decided to escape and took a bus to the town of Kizlyar in [the Russian North Caucasus republic of] Dagestan,” he said.

Suyunova was brought to Moscow on January 2, 2011, after a check of her documents in the city of Volgograd on her way to Dagestan. She was found guilty of banditry, an attempt to perpetrate a terrorist act, the illegal making and possession of explosive devices committed as part of an organized group.

The Kommersant business daily reported in April that Suyunova became involved in terrorism against her will.

According to the daily, Suyunova said that while studying pharmacology in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, she made friends with a group of Wahhabis, left home and married a man who turned out to be a militant. After her husband was arrested for organizing terrorist attacks, Suyunova was taken to the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan where she was told that her spouse had died and she had to take revenge for him by blowing herself up in Moscow.