Four men accused of carrying out last year's terror attack on the Crocus City Hall entertainment center near Moscow pleaded guilty on the first day of their trial on August 4 after questions about their treatment in custody and suspicions that they were recruited by the real perpetrators of the attack -- Islamic State -- to serve as scapegoats.
The four suspects, all Tajik nationals, were captured a day after the attack and appeared to have been beaten when they first appeared in court shortly after the attack on March 22, 2024, left more than 140 people dead and more than 550 injured.
The Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), known to recruit mainly among Central Asians, claimed responsibility for the attack. The United States and France said at the time that Islamic State was "solely responsible" for the attack.
Three of the four defendants -- Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Faizov -- pleaded guilty to charges of carrying out the terror attack as their trial began on August 4 in front of a three-judge panel at the Second Western District Military Court.
A fourth suspect -- Saidakram Rachabalizoda -- pleaded partly guilty.
Their trial initially was open to the public, but the judges granted a request by the prosecution to hold the proceedings behind closed doors when evidence was discussed.
Relatives of Faizov told RFE/RL in March 2024 that he "was not a religious person" and was going to go to study in China. His mother said her son wanted to financially help his family, so he went to work in Russia as a hairdresser and sent money to his father. The relatives said they were sure that Faizov was framed.
Rights activists said they feared the trial would not be fair given that the four suspects were captured a day after the attack and bore signs of having been beaten by police. One appeared to have had an ear cut off in a video posted to Telegram.
"In normal democratic countries, this would never happen - confessions were beaten out of people accused of a terrorist attack and they (the authorities) don't even hide it," human rights activist Karimjon Yorov told RFE/RL's Russian service.
Others questioned whether 15 other people who were rounded up and accused of helping the suspects had actually committed criminal offenses, saying that police were employing a guilt-by-association mentality.
Some of them were charged after renting apartments to those allegedly involved.
"In my opinion, they simply recruited scapegoats," said Gennady Gudkov, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer, who also was once a deputy in the State Duma and one of the few Russian politicians critical of the Kremlin.
"It is difficult to understand the degree of their guilt. I have the impression that this trial is an excuse for not conducting a real investigation."
The ethnicity of the attackers sparked a surge in ethnic profiling and arbitrary arrests of Central Asians in Russia as well as increased instances of xenophobia and cruelty by far-right nationalist groups.
Russian authorities amended legislation in the summer of 2024 to give the police more powers to expel migrants without court orders.
Meanwhile, a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report highlighted video evidence of coordinated physical assaults by young Slavic-looking men on Central Asian men working in construction, maintenance, and service sectors.
"While failing to condemn these xenophobic actions, Russian authorities have also intensified their targeting of Central Asian migrants," HRW said in the March 2025 report.
Russia depends heavily on migrant labor, with close to 3.3 million workers from Central Asia working in Russia in 2024.
Despite their importance to the economy, Russian officials continue to ratchet up pressure on those entering the country from Central Asia.
Officials say they are preparing to launch a sweeping new system in September that will combine biometric registration, location tracking, and intensified police oversight to monitor migrant workers.
The program marks the latest phase in the Kremlin's tightening grip on migration under the banner of national security and social order.
The Crocus City Hall attack was the worst terrorist incident in Russian since the 2004 Beslan school siege in which 333 people, many of them children, were killed.
Russia's Investigative Committee early in its probe into the attack said it had uncovered evidence that the four gunmen were linked to Ukraine, a claim dismissed by Kyiv and Washington.
Svetlana Petrenko, a representative of the Investigative Committee, in June said the crime was planned and committed "in the interests of the current leadership of Ukraine in order to destabilize the political situation in Russia."
A White House spokesman in March 2024 said Russia's claim of Ukrainian involvement was “nonsense and propaganda."
The spokesman added that Washington had tried to help prevent the attack by sending a message to Russia's security services about two weeks before the attack occurred.
This was one of multiple advance warnings that the United States provided to Russian authorities about the potential for extremist attacks on concerts and large gatherings in Moscow, the spokesman said.
