On March 26, student Ramazan Gandoloev, the last of three students wanted by the police on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack, voluntarily came to the Malgobek police. The search for three guys who disappeared on February 27 caused a great stir in the republic.
Three students of the Astrakhan Medical Academy - brothers Malik and Ramazan Gandaloev from Ingushetia and Arsen Gammadov from Dagestan - left for Ingushetia from Astrakhan on February 27 and disappeared. It was known that in the evening they got out of a minibus near the village of Troitskoye, Sunzhensky district. On March 2, Gammadov wrote a message to his father: “Don’t look for me.”
On March 6, the police issued a notice about their search. According to law enforcement officials, a “farewell letter of a religious extremist nature” was found in their rented apartment in Astrakhan. This suggested that the missing may be planning a terrorist attack.
Not only the police, but also their parents were looking for the students. The Gandoloevs’ father, a well-known doctor in Ingushetia, announced a reward of 1 million rubles for information about their whereabouts. The mother recorded and distributed a video message on social networks to her sons with a request “not to harm people” and “to return home.”
On March 21, the eldest of the brothers, 23-year-old Malik, was spotted in a store in the village of Alkhasty. The saleswoman filmed it on her phone camera and sent it to her father. He and his relatives arrived at the scene and unsuccessfully searched for the missing people for several hours, after which they notified the police.
The next day, employees of the Ingush Center for Combating Extremism, with the support of special forces, detained Malik Gandaloev and Arsen Gammadov. According to some sources, this happened in a forest in the Alkhasty region, according to others, next to a rural mosque where they wanted to spend the night. On the same day, a criminal case was opened against the students under the article on possession of explosives - law enforcement officers reported that they had allegedly discovered a cache containing a homemade explosive device with destructive elements.
On March 27, media reports appeared that the day before, Ramazan Gandoloev, along with his father and lawyer, came to the Malgobek police station. The father recorded a video evidence of this at the gate of the police department, in which he says: “Here is my son in good health. Here is his lawyer Mustafa. Ramzan, you didn’t harm anyone, don’t worry.”
Investigators are finding out why the students hid from their families for so long. According to Ingush media, the Gandoloev brothers studied excellently at the university - one was in the 4th year, the other in the 6th year. Both graduated from school with a gold medal.