Authorities have killed or arrested 40 people involved in the 2009 deadly bombing of the Nevsky Express train and determined who was behind recent suicide attacks in the Moscow metro and Dagestan, Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov said Tuesday.
Law enforcement officers have killed 26 people and detained 14 others who assisted in the Nov. 27 attack on the Moscow-St. Petersburg train that killed 28 people, Bortnikov said, RIA-Novosti reported.
The 40 people have been linked to more than 50 other attacks on law enforcement officers, he said.
Bortnikov also said the FSB has determined the identities of those who carried out and masterminded the twin suicide bombings in the Moscow metro on March 29, which killed 40 commuters and injured 121 others, and two suicide bombings in the Dagestani town of Kizlyar two days later that killed 10.
Bortnikov did not provide names of the suspects or names of the 40 people linked to the Nevsky Express bombing.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has claimed responsibility for the metro explosions, and the two female bombers who carried out the attacks have been identified as Dagestani natives Mariam Sharipova, 28, and Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, 17.
Investigators are looking for Sharipova's 34-year-old brother, Anvar, on suspicion that he helped coordinate the attacks.
Anvar Sharipov, who lives with his wife in Moscow and has worked at a gas station, denied in an interview published Tuesday that he was involved in the attacks. He said he had gone into hiding because he feared being falsely charged and tortured into confessing.
"I know of the methods that they use during interrogations when they need to prove something that didn't happen," Sharipov was quoted as saying by Novaya Gazeta.
Sharipov said witnesses, his cell phone billing and recordings fr om street surveillance cameras could "prove wh ere I was during every minute of those days."
Bortnikov also said Tuesday that the FSB has prevented 10 terrorist attacks this year.
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