Four men jailed over Moscow airport bombing

A Russian court jailed three men for life and one for 10 years today over their role in a suicide bombing which killed 37 people at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport nearly three years ago.

Chechen warlord Doku Umarov says he ordered the attack on January 24th, 2011, as part of an Islamist insurgency against Russian rule of the North Caucasus. He has since urged supporters to attack the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea city of Sochi.

Brothers Islam and Ilez Yandiyev, Akhmed Yevloyev and Bashir Khamkhoyev were jailed for offences including commissioning an act of terror, murder and attempted murder.

Only Yevloyev did not receive a life sentence from the Moscow regional court, Russian news agencies said. Prosecutors had asked for a shorter term for him because he was a minor at the time of the attack.

State prosecutors said the four had helped the suicide bomber travel from their native region of Ingushetia in the North Caucasus to Moscow and providing him with an apartment, an explosives belt and transport.

Vladimir Putin sent troops to Chechnya to halt a separatist rebellion in 1999, when he was prime minister, but Russia still faces almost daily violence in the North Caucasus in his third term as president.

Umarov, the leader of Russia’s Islamist insurgency, has urged his fighters to use “maximum force” to sabotage the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February.

Reuters