The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (TFR) and the Prosecutor General’s Office sorted out the circumstances of the terrorist attack committed last fall against employees of the Russian embassy in Kabul. Representatives of the Taliban terrorist movement, banned in Russia, sent the ICR their protocols for examining the scene and interrogating witnesses, and the Uzbek authorities, in turn, passed on characteristics of a citizen of this country, Khusanjon Osimiya. According to investigators, he joined another terrorist organization banned in Russia, the Islamic State (IS), and acted as a suicide bomber. The relatives of the deceased did not agree with the accusation, so he will be tried in Russia in absentia and posthumously.
As the Kommersant source explained, in the proceedings with a crime committed abroad, not only the main investigative department of the TFR, which was involved in the criminal case, but also the department of legal support and international cooperation of the investigative department, as well as the main department of international legal cooperation of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Through these two structures, all correspondence was conducted, as a result of which, over the ten months of the proceedings, it was possible to form a decent amount of evidence in the criminal case.
Kommersant’s interlocutor emphasized the role of representatives of the Taliban movement banned in Russia, who actively responded to requests for legal assistance in the case.
“Copies of the protocols for the inspection of the scene and the interrogation of witnesses from Kabul arrived very promptly,” the Kommersant source explained.
With Uzbekistan, whose citizen was the alleged suicide bomber Khusanjon Osimy, everything turned out to be even simpler. Communication with Uzbek colleagues was carried out through the Bureau for Coordinating the Fight against Organized Crime and Other Dangerous Types of Crimes of the CIS Member States. In addition, the Russians had to ask the law enforcement officers of Uzbekistan not even for legal assistance, but only for assistance. It was expressed in the provision of the so-called harmat on a probable criminal – materials characterizing him at his former place of residence.
In addition, already at the final stage of the investigation, Uzbek law enforcement officers, at the request of the Russians, interviewed Khusanjon Osimiy’s parents for their consent to the termination of the criminal prosecution of their son in connection with his death. Since there was a negative answer, the criminal case, as reported by the Prosecutor General’s Office, will be considered on the merits in the 2nd Western District Military Court in Moscow.
The probable offender will be tried in absentia and posthumously.
Recall that the terrorist attack near the consular section of the Russian Embassy in Kabul occurred on September 5, 2022. On this day, as it was established by the investigation, Khusanjon Osimy, who had lived in Afghanistan for a long time, came to the building of the Russian diplomatic mission, under whose clothes a home-made bomb was hidden. The militant managed to overcome several security posts, but when he tried to get into the building itself, he was stopped. “The terrorist was spotted and shot by Taliban embassy guards,” Mavlawi Sabir, head of the district police, later said.
However, before his death, the criminal still managed to activate the explosives. Fragments of a home-made bomb then killed four Afghan policemen and two consular officers who went out into the street to read lists of those who received Russian visas to the Afghans who had gathered near the diplomatic mission. The second secretary of the embassy, a native of Afghanistan, Mahmud Shah and specialist expert Kuzhuget Adygzha were awarded the Order of Courage posthumously.
Representatives of the Taliban then promised to conduct a “comprehensive investigation into the attack”, “take serious steps to ensure the security of diplomatic missions” and generally kept their promises. According to the investigation, it was possible to establish that the probable militant Osimiy supported the ideology of the banned ISIS, was a member of the Afghan division of this organization “Vilayat Khorasan”, and, as stated in the materials of the Russian investigation, he decided to commit a self-explosion “in order to disrupt the peaceful coexistence of Russia and Afghanistan, and also their peoples. The TFR qualified these crimes as participation in the activities of a terrorist organization and an act of international terrorism (part 2 of article 205.5 and part 3 of article 361 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).