Website With Qaeda Ties Publishes Claim on St. Petersburg Bombing
By IVAN NECHEPURENKO and RUKMINI CALLIMACHIAPRIL 25, 2017
MOSCOW — A website that has previously carried Al Qaeda messages on Tuesday issued a claim of responsibility for the recent subway bombing
in St. Petersburg, Russia, publishing a statement from a previously unknown cell said to be working on behalf of the terrorist group.
The previously unknown group claiming responsibility, the Imam Shamil Battalion, said in its statement
that Mr. Dzhalilov had acted on the orders of Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist propaganda.
Muslim said that This operation is only the beginning, and what is to come will make you forget it,
Experts urged caution because the website, Agence Nouakchott d’Information, or ANI, is associated with Al Qaeda’s branches in Africa
and is not a normal venue for the terrorist group’s claims of responsibility from elsewhere in the world.
Mr. Dzhalilov was a native of Kyrgyzstan who had a Russian passport and had lived in St. Petersburg for at least five years before the attack.
The St. Petersburg attack was the first major attack in a large urban center in Russia since twin bombings rocked central Volgograd in 2013.
