Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 24, 2024, p. 24
Moscow. The hostage-taking of eight guards and four prisoners on Friday by a group of four inmates in possession of knives at prison No. 19, just a few kilometres from the city of Surovikino, Volgograd region, left four guards dead and four others injured, hospitalised in varying degrees of severity, including the prison director, Andrei Deviatov, reported the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia (FSIN, by its acronym in Russian).
The FSIN added that the kidnappers, originally from Central Asia, two from Uzbekistan and two from Tajikistan, who had uploaded a video on social networks in which they declared themselves followers of the radical group Islamic State, banned in Russia as terrorist organization.
In that video, a bloodied security guard was forced to ask President Vladimir Putin to comply with the attackers’ demands to release the other detained staff members and the other captives, as well as to provide them, according to police sources cited by the Baza news service, with $2 million and a helicopter to escape.
By pure chance, the Russian president learned the news while he was leading, via video conference, the usual weekly meeting with the members of the Russian Security Council. After surrounding the prison premises and locating snipers, special units of the National Guard stormed the center and neutralized (euphemism for killed) all the kidnappers, said the police force’s statement.
On Telegram, which has become the fastest means of communication in Russia, the channels Baza, Shot and Ostorzhno, Novosti (Beware, News) published the police files of the four attackers, three of whom were convicted of drug dealing and one of whom was convicted of manslaughter during a fight. They are Ramzindin Toshev (Uzbekistan), Nazirchon Toshov and Navruzi Rostamchon (both from Tajikistan), all three convicted of drug trafficking, and Temur Khusinoff (Uzbekistan), who was serving a sentence for manslaughter by negligence.
The authorities have yet to find out how the prisoners got hold of the knives in a centre that was supposed to be high security, and there is no shortage of unofficial versions that implicate some member of the security service who, for money or revenge on their superiors, introduced the knives.
Second riot in 2 months
This Friday’s case is the second such case this summer. On June 16, six radical Islamists from Ingushetia, a Russian republic in the North Caucasus – three of whom were already convicted in December 2023 for attempting to bomb a court building – were awaiting trial on suspicion of military involvement. in terrorist organization They also took two hostages, among the guards of the pre-trial detention center No. 1 in the city of Rostov-on-Don, with sharp weapons.
They demanded firearms, a vehicle and the possibility of leaving the country. It ended the same way: during the attack by the special units all the perpetrators were killed, except one, who was seriously injured.