The intelligence service is investigating the Moscow acquaintances and workplaces of the radical Islamist terrorist responsible for Monday's deadly suicide bombing on a public bus in Volgograd, a news report said Thursday.
The bomber, 30-year-old Naida Asiyalova, may have planned to carry out the attack in Moscow but then changed plans while leaving Volgograd on a bus bound for the capital, unidentified officials in the intelligence service told Izvestia.
If this was the case, then terrorist organizations possibly connected to the attack, which killed six including Asiyalova and injured more than 50, would have members in the capital, an individual close to the investigation said.
Detectives working the case are considering the possibility that Dagestan-born Asiyalova recruited accomplices during the seven years that she lived in Moscow and are currently trying to identify individuals who knew and worked with her.
There is reason to believe that her husband, 21-year-old Dmitry Sokolov, was involved in organizing the attack, the Investigative Committee said in a statement Wednesday, asking citizens to provide any information concerning his whereabouts.
Asiyalova's first job in Moscow was at the Turkish construction company Enka İnşaat ve Sanayi A.Ş., where she met her first husband, a Turkish native, reportedly prior to her conversion to radical Islam.
A company spokesman confirmed that Asiyalova worked in the firm, adding, "They haven't come to us for information yet, and it's unlikely that we can help at all — Asiyalova worked for us several years ago."
Later, as confirmed by company director Yury Chinkov, Asiyalova worked at the Russian branch of British human resources advisory service Coleman Services UK in an office near Novoslobodskaya metro station. Chinkov also said that the company has already handed over all its information to investigators.
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