MOSCOW (AP) – Jury selection in the trial of 17 people charged with planning a series of terrorist acts began Monday in a mostly Muslim region in central Russia, a defense lawyer said, in the second trial connected to millennial celebrations of the region’s capital two years.
Prosecutors in Tatarstan have charged the 17 in connection with an alleged plot planned in the run-up to the millennium festival for the city of Kazan, about 700 kilometers (450 miles) east of Moscow. Among the charges they face are membership in an alleged militant group called Islamic Jamaat, terrorism, illegal weapons possession and inciting religious hatred, prosecutors said last year in announcing the charges.
The defendants, being tried at Tatarstan Supreme Court, had requested a jury trial and jury selection began Monday afternoon, defense lawyer Marina Ganiyeva told The Associated Press.
Interfax reported that two of the defendants refused to acknowledge the court’s authority and were thrown out of the court room; one defendant, Shamil Tamimdarov, said the group confessed to the charges because they had been tortured.
No attacks took place during Kazan’s millennium celebrations.
In a related trial last year, the Tatarstan Supreme Court upheld the conviction of five Muslim teenagers accused of similar charges related to the Kazan millennial celebration last year.
Ilgam Gumerov, one of the 17 suspects who testified during the previous trial, alleged that the case had been fabricated and that statements he made were induced by torture. He said jailers had handcuffed him to his cell for two days, deprived him of food and drink and demanded he sign confessions.
Rights activists have said the trials are part of a pattern of harassment of pious Muslim believers in an atmosphere of repression fed by wars in Chechnya against Islamic militants and separatists.
They warn the case is increasingly radicalizing young men in Tatarstan, where Muslims make up just over half of the population.
