The first two suspects in the deadly Moscow concert hall attack appeared in a Russian court late Sunday to face terrorism charges, AFP reported, citing Russian state news agencies.
The TASS news agency cited Moscow's Basmanny District Court as saying that two of the suspects had been charged with participating in a terrorist attack.
The suspects, identified as Saidakrami Murodalii Rachabalizoda and Dalerdjon Barotovich Mirzoyev, face charges of a "terror attack committed by a group of individuals resulting in a person's death", according to TASS.
The court released a video showing police officers bringing one of the suspects into the courtroom in handcuffs, as well as photographs of the same man sitting in a glass cage for defendants.
Authorities said the suspects were foreign nationals.
Friday night's attack on the Crocus City Call outside Moscow that killed 137 people and wounded over 180 was claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization, though Russian officials have so far suggested that the suspects had links to Ukraine.
Kyiv denies any involvement in this attack. On Saturday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of seeking to “shift the blame” onto Kyiv for the Moscow attack.
“What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else,” Zelenskyy announced, after Putin said the suspects in the attack had been fleeing toward Ukraine.
His comments came after Putin said that the four terrorists arrested for the deadly attack were “traveling toward Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.”
The US National Security Council said in no uncertain terms on Saturday night that Ukraine had nothing to do with the deadly concert attack.
"ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever," NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement quoted by NBC News.
Watson noted that the United States "shared information with Russia about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow."
