The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) foiled a terrorist plot involving four men, all of whom are followers of the Islamic State, in the Stavropol region of Russia, news agency TASS reported.
“The Federal Security Service, the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry, have thwarted a terrorist attack in the Stavropol region. A man born in 1996, who has a history of common crimes, has been detained in the city of Kislovodsk for plotting to use homemade explosive devices to attack law enforcement officers in the interest of international terrorist organizations,” the FSB announced in a statement.
The Russian man allegedly intended to blow up the police station with a home-assembled bomb fashioned from hand grenades, which was the same station where he had to report regularly for probation after his release from prison.
Additionally, FSB also arrested three accomplices of the suspect in Kislovodsk, who were implicated in preparing the attack. The three men played a role in organizing financial support for Islamist militants fighting in Syria. All four detainees are followers of the Islamic State terrorist organization.
“They established a cell of the Islamic State international terrorist organization outlawed in Russia in order to commit terrorist crimes in the Stavropol region,” the FSB added.
Components of explosive devices, explosives, as well as extremist literature and bomb-making instructions were seized from the terrorist suspects. Authorities are currently preparing to charge the four with planning and preparing for a terrorist attack.
FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said in early March that security forces in Russia had managed to prevent about 200 acts of terrorism in the past ten years.
