A court in the Russian city of St. Peterburg has sentenced a Central Asian man arrested in connection with a high-profile April bombing that killed 16 people on a subway train in the city.
Obod Abdyraimov from Kyrgyzstan pleaded guilty to recruiting men and women to join the Islamic State (IS) extremist organization and was sentenced to five years in jail on December 14.
Investigators said that one of the men recruited by Abdyraimov was Makhamadyusuf Mirzaalimov, an ethnic Uzbek from Kyrgyzstan, who is a suspect in the subway bombing case.
Russian authorities have said that 10 Central Asians were arrested after a 22-year-old Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen, Akbarjon Jalilov, detonated a bomb on the St. Petersburg subway on April 3, killing himself and 15 passengers.
The Russian Investigative Committee said the suspects were involved in masterminding and implementing the attack.