It is no news that
Russia has been hunting a mysterious gang that has terrorized Moscow motorists
in recent months with a series of murders resembling the violent video game
Grand Theft Auto.
The gang is believed to have killed some 20 people.
In the dead of
night, the gang members placed metal spikes on roads just outside Moscow to
burst the tyres of passing cars for no
specific reason at all, then ruthlessly gunned down their drivers steal money
and disappear.
Among their victims
were a policeman, a senior banker, and even a former dancer from a famous folk
dancing troupe.
In a sign of how
seriously the crimes are being treated, the police have teamed up with the FSB
security agency, the successor to the KGB, to tackle the murders and President
Vladimir Putin has gotten personally involved.
“Essentially, this
crime is terrorist by nature,” Putin told Interior Minister Vladimir
Kolokoltsev late last week.
“I know you are
working together with the security services, with the FSB. I hope you will see
this through.”
Kolokoltsev reported
to Putin after law enforcement agencies reportedly caught several members of
the gang, and the Russian strongman commended police for “solving” the crime.
The gang calls
itself “jaamat” (group in Arabic) and is on a mission to hunt down “infidels,”
said the government mouthpiece.
According to another
popular version, the attackers are militants affiliated with Islamists who are
using the roads around Moscow as a training ground to prepare to join their
cause in Syria or elsewhere.
After refusing to
comment for days, the Investigative Committee, which reports directly to Putin,
broke its silence saying it had already
arrested the first suspects.
One of the gang
leaders put up armed resistance and was killed, the Investigative Committee
said in a statement, referring to the gang as the “so-called GTA.”
“Investigators
established that when killing people, gang members were guided only by motives
of profit, stealing their victims’ money,” it said.
Investigators said
that “the hypothesis that members of the gang were mimicking the GTA computer
game has not been proven.”
The arrests
apparently came as part of a major operation in which law enforcement agencies
rounded up a group of guest workers from Central Asia last week.
According to law
enforcement leaks reported in Russian media, the suspected ringleader of the
gang was shot dead near Moscow as he tried to attack police with a hand grenade.
“This case is
explosive and extremely sensitive,” Makarkin told AFP. “The authorities will do
anything to avoid ethnic clashes. These can be exploited by ultra-right
nationalists to call for the persecution of migrants.”
Social tensions have
risen dramatically in Russia this year, fuelled by a Moscow-based separatist
uprising in Ukraine, Western sanctions and growing unemployment.
A group of volunteer
vigilantes some armed with handguns have organized regular patrols along the
roads near Moscow in a bid to nab the killers.
