Tajikistan this week arrested nine people suspected of having links to a massacre at a Russian concert hall last Friday and also to the Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the attack, a security source in the country told Reuters.
Four suspects in Russia's deadliest attack in 20 years are Tajik citizens. They were arrested alongside seven other suspects, some of whom also hail from the former Soviet nation in Central Asia.
Tajikistan's state security committee arrested nine people on Monday in the city of Vakhdat and the suspects are now in the capital Dushanbe, the source said, without elaborating.
At least 143 people were killed in the concert hall attack near Moscow.
Tajikistan, a member of a Russian-led security bloc and home to a Russian military base, has also rounded up the suspects' families so Russian investigators can question them in Dushanbe, sources told Reuters this week.
The predominantly Muslim nation of 10 million people shares a border with Afghanistan and relies heavily on remittances from migrants working in Russia. Its own economy was devastated by a civil war in the 1990s.
(Reporting by Nazarali Pirnazarov Writing by Olzhas Auyezov)
Source: CNN Brasil
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