Russian police have arrested a woman
holding the severed head of a young child outside a subway station in Moscow
today.
The woman, wearing a black hijab, or
veil, was filmed by bystanders outside the station in northwest Moscow
brandishing the child’s head and screaming, “I am a terrorist.”
Witnesses also told state media that
the woman had threatened to blow herself up.
Despite the woman’s claims, police
say they believe the woman is mentally disturbed and are treating it as a
criminal incident, not terrorism. In a statement, Russia’s Investigative
Committee -- the equivalent of the FBI -- said the woman was
being treated by psychiatric experts and did not seem to understand the meaning
of her actions.
Russian police officers secure an
area near a subway station in Moscow on Feb. 29, 2016.more +
The committee said it had arrested
the 39-year-old woman from an unspecified Central Asian country in the slaying
of a 3- to 4-year-old child and that the woman was the child’s nanny. Police
said they had not yet established the motive.
Witnesses told the state news
agency, RIA Novosti, that the alleged incident began when the woman was
approached by a policeman who asked her to show her documents, after which the
woman allegedly pulled the child’s head from her handbag. After walking around
for a short time allegedly shouting threats, the woman was arrested by police.
The Investigative Committee
statement said it believed the woman had killed the child at home while its
parents were out and then had set fire to the apartment where she had committed
the alleged crime. RIA Novosti reported that the child’s decapitated body had
been found when firefighters extinguished the blaze.
Following the woman’s arrest, a bomb
squad from Russia’s FSB security service was checking the area around the
subway station for explosives, the Interfax news agency reported, but said none
had been found. The FSB also denied reports that traces of explosives had been
found on the woman.
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