"It has been established that the crime was arranged and carried out under the guidance of Wahhabite leaders Anzor Astemirov and Iles Gorchkhanov", Shepel said. In all, eight persons were involved in the crime and the required information arrived from the earlier dismissed officials of the committee's Kabardino-Balkaria board. These officials have been arrested and are testifying.
"Five accomplices in the crime have been detained", Shepel said. The operation was held jointly by officers from the Interior Ministry, Federal Security Service and the Drug Control Committee.
Shepel said that this crime is another proof that an international terrorist organization operates in southern Russia. It is made up of military-religious rings connected according to the ethnic-territorial principle and maintaining close cooperation.
About the same structure was in the Basaev and Khattab bands, which attacked regions in Daghestan in 1999, and in the Gelaev band, which tried an inroad on North Ossetia and Ingushetia in 2002, Shepel said.
