Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published on Telegram the purported confession of one of the men apprehended in connection with the attack on the Crocus City Hall complex.
In the brief video, a man with a bloodied bandaged head speaks in halting Russian. He gives his name and says he is 30 years old.
His interrogator asks him where the weapons used in the attack were dropped off, whether near Moscow or closer to the venue site. He replies, “I don’t know the city, ask my friends, they know.”
RIA also posted images of three of the alleged attackers after they were detained, images that match videos uploaded on unofficial channels earlier Saturday showing the men being apprehended in Bryansk region. No image or video of the fourth alleged attacker has been published on Russian state media.
In an accompanying commentary, RIA Novosti said the alleged attackers all speak Russian “extremely poorly,” with one of the men speaking “in Tajik through an interpreter.”
It added that one of the men said he’d been promised by an unnamed person who called himself “an assistant to the preacher” a half-million rubles (about $5,000) to carry out the attack. He later gave a different figure.
RIA Novosti said one of the alleged attackers had mentioned returning to Russia from Turkey earlier this month. The men lived together in a hostel in the north of Moscow, and two of them met only “10-12 days ago,” according to RIA. The car they drove to Crocus City Hall and then used to escape had been bought through a family connection, it reported.
According to RIA, “a coherent picture does not emerge from the interrogation fragments. It is not entirely clear what exactly connected these people, what motives they were guided by, organizing one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in the history of Russia.”
CNN cannot independently verify the veracity of the RIA Novosti report or the statements made by the alleged attacker, which may have been made under duress.
