The Federal Security Service confirmed Tuesday that one of the two suicide bombings on Moscow's metro last week was carried out by a 28-year-old teacher from Dagestan whose father recognized a photograph of her detached head.
"I did recognize my daughter in the picture," Mariam Sharipova's father, Rasul Magomedov, said Tuesday. "It was really hard when they put your daughter's head in front of you."
The FSB said evidence showed that Sharipova, a university-educated computer science teacher, was the bomber who died at the Lubyanka metro station. The one who died at Park Kultury had been identified earlier as Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, the 17-year-old widow of an Islamic militant slain by government forces.
The FSB said Sharipova was believed to have been the wife of Magomedali Vagabov, an Islamist warlord operating in Dagestan.
Her father said local FSB officers told him that several weeks ago, but he had believed his daughter when she said she would never marry without his consent.
"It's absolute nonsense," Magomedov said, speaking by telephone from Dagestan. "She was always at school or at home. If there is a husband, his wife should be with him."
Sharipova, an only daughter, taught at the same school as her parents and lived with them in their home village, Balakhani. Her father described her as "patient and well-educated."
He said she was religious but never expressed any radical beliefs or gave any indication that she was involved with militants.
"I don't believe what has happened. It's too hard," Magomedov said. "She never believed in sects, and I don't, and our village has been Muslim for ages. We never had any apostates, and even in Soviet times there was a working mosque."
A Chechen militant leader, Doku Umarov, claimed responsibility for the Moscow attacks, which he said were retaliation for the killing of civilians by security forces.
The two March 29 bombings, which killed 40 people and wounded 121 during the morning rush hour, were the first suicide attacks in the capital in six years.