MOSCOW - A Russian court jailed four alleged Islamist militants on Monday for plotting to bomb a high-speed train between Moscow and St Petersburg last year.
Moscow City Court handed prison terms of 15 to 18 years to Islam Khamzhuyev, Fail Nevlyutov, Mansur Umayevand Mansur Edilbiyev, natives of Russia’s troubled North Caucasus region.
Prosecutors said they had tried to attack the Sapsan train in summer 2011, state news agency Itar-tass reported. A lawyer for the accused said the defence would appeal.
The Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in its mostly Muslim North Caucasus that continues in the wake of two wars between Moscow’s security forces and Chechen separatists in the region.
Insurgents seeking to establish an Islamic state claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 27 people on aMoscow-St Petersburg train in 2009, a suicide bombing that killed 37 at Moscow’s busiest airport in 2011 and bombings on the Moscow metro that killed 40 in 2010.
Earlier this year, Russia jailed 10 people – four of them for life – for the 2009 bombing on the Moscow-St Petersburg line.
