Aslambek Ezhaev, the owner of the Umma Publishing House, has been arrested in Moscow on suspicion of financing terrorism, Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for the Russian Investigative Committee, told TASS on Friday.
"As part of the criminal case, investigators in cooperation with the Federal Security Service, the Interior Ministry, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service and Rosfinmonitoring have established the involvement of Aslambek Ezhaev in terrorism financing. He was accused of committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 205.1 of the Criminal Code ("Organization of the financing of terrorist activities"). At the request of the investigation the court chose a measure of restraint in the form of detention," she said.
According to her, Ezhaev is the founder and owner of the publishing house "Umma", which "was also used for the collection and transfer of funds". "The books of this publishing house were declared extremist according to the conclusion of expert examinations, but the man formally changed the name of the works and republished them. These books were also distributed to prisoners," said a representative of the Investigative Committee.
According to the department, not later than 2012, Aslambek Ezhaev organized the financing of terrorist activities of the international terrorist organization "Islamic State" (IS), which is banned in Russia. "Between 2012 and the present time, Ezhaev repeatedly conducted conspiratorial meetings with counterparties, from whom he received funds intended for the financing of the "Islamic State." He subsequently transferred more than 34 million rubles to persons wanted in Russia for committing terrorist crimes," explained Petrenko.
In Ezhayev's country houses and apartments in various districts of Moscow, they found bank cards used to finance terrorism, technical means of transmitting information, prohibited literature, and other extremist paraphernalia.
Connection with Said Buryatsky
The Center for Public Relations (CPR) of the Russian Federal Security Service also stated that Ezhaev was a member of a concealed IS cell. In addition, according to the FSB, he was previously linked to terrorist ideologue Said Buryatsky. "Within the framework of a criminal case investigated by the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia for Moscow under Part 4 of Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Organization of terrorist financing"), a Russian citizen Aslambek Kaspievich Ezhaev was detained in Moscow, who was a member of a deeply concealed cell of the international terrorist organization "Islamic State," the FSB reported. According to the special service, "Ezhaev was also a close associate of the ideologist of the North Caucasus armed bandit underground, Alexander Tikhomirov (kwon as Said Buryatsky), who was liquidated in 2010, as well as other terrorists".
Some of the literature published by the Umma Publishing House is banned by the Ministry of Justice, is of a Wahhabi nature, is extremist, and promotes the idea of a "world caliphate". The FSB specified that at four places of residence and facilities used by Ezhaev and his close relatives to print and distribute banned books, they seized cell phones with messages from terrorists, a significant number of bank cards, accounting documents for money transfers, and accounting documents of the Umma publishing house.
It indicates that during the period from 2010 to the present more than 900 thousand books were issued for a total amount of 95 million rubles. They also found postal orders for extremist literature from the penitentiary institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia from the convicts on terrorist articles at Ezhayev's place of residence. "Additionally, a laboratory was found at the residence of one of Ezhaev's close relatives for the production of presumably plant-based narcotic substances for sale," the FSB reported.
According to the FSB, Ezhaev has sent more than 34 million rubles to persons reasonably suspected of terrorism since 2012 through bank cards and the informal financial and settlement system "Hawala," often used to financially support terrorist organizations.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Artem Geodakyan / TASS
Based on materials from TASS