Russia says teacher was 2nd subway suicide bomber

MOSCOW — Investigators confirmed today that one of the two suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway last week was carried out by a 28-year-old teacher from the North Caucasus whose father recognized a photograph of her.

“I did recognize my daughter in the picture,” Maryam Sharipova’s father, Rasul Magomedov, told The Associated Press today.

The two March 29 bombings, which killed 40 people and wounded 121 during the morning rush hour, were the first suicide attacks in the capital in six years. They served as a stark reminder of the Islamic insurgency raging in predominantly Muslim provinces of the North Caucasus, including Dagestan, where both bombers were from.

The Federal Security Service said evidence showed that Sharipova, a university-educated computer science teacher, was one of the bombers. The other had been identified earlier as Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, the 17-year-old widow of an Islamic militant slain by government forces.

The security service said Sharipova was believed to have been the wife of an Islamic militant.

Her father said local security officers told him that several weeks ago, but he had believed his daughter when she said she would never marry without his consent.

“It’s absolute nonsense,” Magomedov said, speaking by telephone from Dagestan. “She was always at school or at home. If there is a husband, his wife should be with him.”

Sharipova, an only daughter, taught at the same school as her parents and lived with them in their home village, Balakhani. Her father described her as “patient and well educated.”

He said she was religious but never expressed any radical beliefs or gave any indication she was involved with militants.

“I don’t believe what has happened. It’s too hard,” Magomedov said. “She never believed in sects, and I don’t, and our village has been Muslim for ages. We never had any apostates, and even in Soviet times there was a working mosque.”

A Chechen militant leader, Doku Umarov, claimed responsibility for the Moscow attacks, which he said were retaliation for the killing of civilians by security forces.

Umarov, a veteran of the two separatist wars in Chechnya, is now seeking to create an Islamic state across the region.

Human rights groups accuse security forces and police in the North Caucasus of fueling the insurgency through extrajudicial killings, abductions and abuses.

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