The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced 24-year-old student from Astrakhan Malik Gandaloev to 20 years in prison in the case of participation in the Islamic State, the press service of the court told Mediazona.
Gandaloev was found guilty of participation in a terrorist organization (Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code) and illegal acquisition, storage and manufacture of explosives (Clause “a” of Part 3 of Article 222.1 of the Criminal Code and Part 2 of Article 223.1 of the Criminal Code). He will spend the first four years of his sentence in prison, the rest of the time in a maximum security colony. The court also imposed a fine of 500 thousand rubles on Gandaloev.
On the morning of June 16, in Rostov pre-trial detention center No. 1, where Gandaloev was held, six prisoners calling themselves IS supporters took two FSIN employees hostage. The prisoners had knives, sharpeners, an Islamic State flag and bandannas with Arabic script. A few hours later, the Federal Penitentiary Service reported that the attackers had been killed. However, one of them, Daniil Kamnev, survived. On July 4, the court arrested him.
The investigation believes that Gandaloev escaped from the cell along with other prisoners — he was the only one who was detained almost immediately, so he did not participate in the hostage-taking. On July 11, the court sent Gandaloev to a pre-trial detention center in the case of escaping from arrest, committed with the use of violence (Part 3 of Article 313 of the Criminal Code). The Mash telegram channel claimed that during his arrest he injured the prison staff with a sharpened blade.
Initially, Gandaloev, a student at the Medical Academy, was detained in March 2023. According to investigators, while in Astrakhan, he entered into a conspiracy with his brother Ramazan and friend Arsen Gammadov, decided to join the Islamic State and bought components for explosives. Then he went to Ingushetia and made an improvised explosive device.
On March 5 last year, the telegram channel “Rozysk Ingushetia” published an announcement about missing students. It said that on February 27, the young people packed their things in a rented apartment in Astrakhan, took a taxi to Nazran, and in the evening got out near the village of Troitskaya.
“They had large travel trunks, a backpack and a sports bag with them. At their place of residence in Astrakhan, a “farewell” was discovered. a letter of a religious extremist nature,” the telegram channel reported. It also said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB “have reasonable suspicions” that the students are “planning to commit terrorist crimes.”
The same telegram channel published a video message from the mothers of Gammadov and Gandaloev with a request to find their sons. Baza claimed that the students’ relatives learned of their disappearance on March 2—the same day, according to the publication, Gammadov wrote his father a message “Don’t look for me.” As Ingushetia’s interlocutor clarified, Ramazan Gandaloev himself turned himself in to the police department.
Arsen and Ramzan were sentenced by the court in May 2024 — they were accused under the same articles as Malik Gandaloev.