The FSB reported the arrest of members of a terrorist cell in three regions of southern Russia.

Investigative bodies of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, in cooperation with the FSB and the Federal Penitentiary Service, have stopped the illegal activities of seven convicted individuals who, according to investigators, were members of a clandestine terrorist cell whose purpose was to raise funds to finance an international terrorist organization and to persuade other convicted individuals to join this organization.

According to the press bureau of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, "a group of convicts serving sentences in Correctional Colony No. 7 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Trans-Baikal Territory created a cell of an international terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation with the purpose of promoting its ideology." The organizers and key members of the cell were detained by FSB officers in Dagestan, the Trans-Baikal Territory, Krasnodar Krai, and the Volgograd Region. Searches were conducted at their residences, and banned literature and mobile phones used to collect and subsequently transfer funds to terrorists and their accomplices were seized, TASS reported today.

A criminal case has been opened for organizing a terrorist organization and participating in it 1 . A case of aiding terrorist activity has also been opened against the organizers. 2 .

Cases have been opened against seven convicts, five of whom previously served sentences in a colony in the region, and two of whom continue to be in correctional facilities, clarified the official representative of the Russian Investigative Committee Svetlana Petrenko.

In Islamic jamaats are forming in Russian prison colonies, whose members demonstratively promote the ideas of terrorist groups without being members, according to analysts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot." The creation of any groups in Russian prison colonies is only possible with the organization and patronage of the Federal Penitentiary Service, noted Magomed Mutsolgov, head of the Ingush human rights organization "Mashr" and a member of the Ingush Public Monitoring Commission. The "Caucasian Knot" also reported that the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Pavel Batayev, former head of a penal colony in Kalmykia, and his former deputy, Artur Tsamayev, for aiding and abetting a terrorist organization.