Russian Court Convicts Four In 2013 Volgograd Bombings

A Russian court has convicted and sentenced four men for helping suicide bombers who killed 34 people in the southern city of Volgograd in December 2013.

The court in Volgograd, which was badly shaken by two of Russia's deadliest suicide attacks, issued the verdicts on December 5.

The federal Investigative Committee said Alautdin Dadayev and Ibragim Magomedov were sentenced to 19 years in prison.

They were found guilty of housing the attackers, who detonated explosives at Volgograd's central railway station on December 29 and on a trolleybus the next day.

Brothers Magomed and Tagir Batirov were sentenced to three years and ten months in prison.

Investigators said they helped bring the attackers to Volgograd from the North Caucasus province of Daghestan, hiding them under hay bales.

The bombings increased fears that Islamist miltants based in the North Caucasus could attack the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014, but that did not happen.

With reporting by Interfax and RIA Novosti