OPINION:
The Uzbek nanny who beheaded a 4-year-old girl in Moscow while the family was away was radicalized by her husband, Suhrob Muminov, who visited Islamic State contacts frequently in the Urgut Mountains in Uzbekistan.
Gulchekhra Bobokulova killed the child while the family was away and paraded the head around a Moscow metro station for an hour before being tackled by police. She was yelling “Allah Akbar,” and “I am a terrorist.” She had been the nanny for three years, was treated like family by her Russian employers and was in Russia illegally.
Her son, Rakhmatillo Ashurov, 19, is being held in custody in Uzbekistan for being “recruited by the Islamic State,” reported the Mirror in the U.K. “Being surrounded by people from Central Asia, he was influenced by recruiters who encouraged him to take part in fighting for terrorists in Syria,” a law enforcement official said.
Russian officials are looking for possible accomplices in the crime. These include the husband and sister of the accused.
The nanny recently visited her husband in Uzbekistan.
“After getting in touch with Suhrob, Gyulchekhra completely changed. She got a hijab, a carpet for praying, religious literature. She started talking some nonsense about the war in Syria,” a source said.
Rumors are rife that Moscow has started massive, intensive checks on individuals serving as nannies or house employees in Moscow. Moscow does not carry out the death penalty, so most likely she will receive life in a Siberian prison camp.
Russian officials have not admitted publicly that the event was terror-related, preferring to say she was mentally unstable. Russia has been actively bombing Syrian opposition forces and the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria.
A Russian airliner was destroyed by ISIS last year when traveling back to Moscow from Egypt.
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