Airport bomber converted by Russian imam: Report
AFP, Jan 28, 2011, 06.32pm
MOSCOW: The man who has emerged as the initial suspect over the suicide bombing at Moscow Domodedovo airport lived in south Russia and was converted to Islam by an ethnic Russian imam, a report said Friday.
Police reportedly honed in on Vitaly Razdobudko after connecting him with Islamist militant group Nogaisky Dzhamaat and a December 31 blast in Moscow where a would-be female suicide bomber accidentally blew herself up.
Investigators said Razdobudko has been missing from his apartment in the southern resort town of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region since last November along with his wife and a newborn baby.
Razdobudko, 32, converted from Christianity and adopted Islam when he was a student in the local technical university. He was formally converted by a local imam in Pyatigorsk, a Russian named Anton Stepanenko, the report said.
Stepanenko, whose Muslim name is Abdullah, was convicted of holding a man captive in 2006, and police found Wahhabist literature, audio and video materials, as well as a manual on explosives, in his home.
He received a suspended sentence after the Muslim community, including the head of the Council of Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin, spoke in his defence and wrote an open letter to then-president Vladimir Putin.
Razdobudko, who has already been branded "Russian Wahhabi" by the press, went missing two months after he was questioned about a blast in Pyatigorsk last August.
He was not the suicide bomber who set off the blast in Domodedovo on Monday, RIA Novosti reported Friday. A video camera "clearly shows that it is a different person," a police source told the agency. Instead, it appears he is suspected of being a possible organiser, it added.
AFP, Jan 28, 2011, 06.32pm
MOSCOW: The man who has emerged as the initial suspect over the suicide bombing at Moscow Domodedovo airport lived in south Russia and was converted to Islam by an ethnic Russian imam, a report said Friday.
Police reportedly honed in on Vitaly Razdobudko after connecting him with Islamist militant group Nogaisky Dzhamaat and a December 31 blast in Moscow where a would-be female suicide bomber accidentally blew herself up.
Investigators said Razdobudko has been missing from his apartment in the southern resort town of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region since last November along with his wife and a newborn baby.
Razdobudko, 32, converted from Christianity and adopted Islam when he was a student in the local technical university. He was formally converted by a local imam in Pyatigorsk, a Russian named Anton Stepanenko, the report said.
Stepanenko, whose Muslim name is Abdullah, was convicted of holding a man captive in 2006, and police found Wahhabist literature, audio and video materials, as well as a manual on explosives, in his home.
He received a suspended sentence after the Muslim community, including the head of the Council of Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin, spoke in his defence and wrote an open letter to then-president Vladimir Putin.
Razdobudko, who has already been branded "Russian Wahhabi" by the press, went missing two months after he was questioned about a blast in Pyatigorsk last August.
He was not the suicide bomber who set off the blast in Domodedovo on Monday, RIA Novosti reported Friday. A video camera "clearly shows that it is a different person," a police source told the agency. Instead, it appears he is suspected of being a possible organiser, it added.
