A woman who was detained in Chechnya on suspicion of recruiting suicide bombers also facilitated contacts among different rebel groups and collected funds abroad for the rebels, Ilya Shabalkin, the spokesman for the Federal Security Service in Chechnya, said Wednesday. State television showed security agents questioning the suspect, Natalya Khalkayeva, 31, and bringing her to a lockup in Grozny. An explosives-filled belt and a satellite phone were confiscated from her, Shabalkin said, Interfax reported.
"We found this explosive belt on her, yer honor!"
"GUILTY as charged! Off to the gallows with her!" |
He said Khalkayeva was a liaison for a rebel leader, Yunadi Turchayiv. He said Khalkayeva used the satellite phone, which had been bought in an Arab country, to maintain contact with funders in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, Austria and other countries.
Khalkayeva frequently traveled outside Chechnya over the past few months in order to receive foreign funds used for terror attacks and recruitment, including of female suicide bombers, Shabalkin said. Izvestia reported that Khalkayeva, an ethnic Chechen, lived in the Kurgan region near the Ural Mountains. She attracted the Chechen security service's attention when she showed up suddenly in Chechnya this past summer, and then disappeared, the newspaper said. She was detained when she surfaced in the southwestern Chechen city of Urus-Martan, Izvestia said. |