Moscow, Sep 23 (IANS): A total of 15 people, reported to be a part of an extremist Islamist community, have been arrested in a crackdown by multiple security agencies in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in Russia's North Caucasus region, and weapons and prohibited religious literature seized from them, authorities announced on Monday.
The Federal Security Service (FSB), in a statement, said its agents, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Guard, had suppressed the activity of an extremist group whose members were coordinating their actions through WhatsApp messenger, RT reported.
A total of 15 Russian citizens were arrested in the crackdown in the Islamey village in the Baksan district. The suspects have been accused of being involved in the "public dissemination of radical ideology based on the denial of traditional Islamic norms and the laws of the Russian Federation, as well as committing violent acts motivated by religious hatred”, as per the FSB.
The FSB added that the Investigative Committee had opened a criminal investigation for “the creation of an extremist community” and for “participation in an extremist community.” If the suspects are found guilty, they could face up to ten years in prison.
The Committee's Svetlana Petrenko told journalists that the group's suspected, Rezuan Kangezov, is believed to have created the community last year with the aim of "using violent methods of persuasion against an unlimited number of people, preparing and committing crimes against them based on religious hatred and enmity", the RT report said.
"On the instructions of the leader of the extremist community, its members subjected individuals whose behaviour did not correspond to the radical extremist ideology" to psychological pressure as well as physical violence, she said.
Searches were also conducted at the residences of the arrested suspects, during which prohibited religious literature was discovered and confiscated.
The FSB also shared a video in which several of the suspects were detained, as well as footage of a search at one of the residences, during which security teams appear to have found a number of firearms and boxes of ammunition.