Russian Officials Claim Moscow Terror Suspects Attacked NATO Forces

The National Antiterrorism Committee’s (NAK) statement gave details of a "special operation to neutralize” a "particularly dangerous” group that it said was actively planning terror attacks in Moscow around the time of the Victory Celebrations in May.

NAK claims the suspects were actively involved with the Islamic Party of Turkestan and that they were trained by an internationally recognized terror group in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region in 2010.

That training involved both ideological instruction and practical training in combat and use of explosives, the statement says.

The statement particularly highlights the claim that they took part in attacks on NATO and allied forces in Afghanistan.

NAK name the man detained on Thursday as Yulai Davletbaev (43), and claim that he was the chief planner of the thwarted terror attacks in Moscow. NAK links this latest operation to action taken in May just outside Moscow during which two suspected militants were killed and one detained. The NAK statement says that it received information regarding Davletbaev from the man detained.

He spent some time working as an unlicensed taxi driver in Moscow as it allowed him to travel freely in the city without attracting the attention of the law enforcement authorities, as he worked to identify targets that would, when hit, result in the greatest damage and number of casualties, the statement adds.

The NAK statement mentions that Russia's Security Service, the FSB, has linked Davletbaev to other terror suspects, including Nafis Shaimukhametov, who was killed by the security services in August 2010 after reportedly organizing attacks on Russia Day (June 12) in the Perm Region which left one policeman dead.

Previous reports in the Russian media suggested that Davletbaev had been killed in the May operation.

The Islamic Party of Turkestan is recognized by some security agencies as being another name for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Movement of Turkestan.

The United States designated the IMU a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2000, and was banned in Russia as such in 2003. It has been active in Afghanistan, attacking international and Afghan forces, and parts of Pakistan for a number of years.

This comes in the wake of a series of high-level meetings between the United States and Russia in which officials pledged increased cooperation in counter terror and counter narcotics operations, and increased sensitivity over this issue after mutual allegations of miscommunication regarding the Boston bombing suspects.