FSB: Supporters of the IG in the suburbs used Telegram

In March, the FSB officers "stopped the activities of four members of the" sleeping cell of the Islamic State "who arrived in the" Moscow region "from the New Urengoy (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) and prepared" resonant terrorist attacks ". As reported on the intelligence service, the supporters of IS allegedly used Telegram.

The activities of the "terrorists" were coordinated through the messenger from the territory of Syria, the special services say.

There were members of the "IS cell" killed or detained, they do not specify the FSB.

Then, they say in the FSB, a “accomplishment base of terrorists” was discovered in Novy Urengoy - special services employees established their “communications from radical residents”.

On April 26, the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs arranged a "preventive special operation" in the city - they conducted 17 searches and detained 20 people. It is alleged that a large number of "religious and extremist literature" and video materials were found during searches, "promoting the activities" of the IG. Some means of communication used to communicate with foreign emissaries were also seized.

The detainees are checked for "involvement in criminal activity", the FSB said. In addition, “the issue of initiating new criminal cases with terrorist coloring is being resolved,” added to the special services.

On the eve of the creator of Telegram, Pavel Durov wrote on his VK page that the owners of Telegram could not help the FSB in the capture of the organizers of last year's terrorist attack in the metro of St. Petersburg. “Even if the FSB request was limited to the help of 6 terrorists who participated in the attack in St. Petersburg, we could hardly be useful: part of the FSB of mobile numbers that interests the FSB never had an account in Telegram, their other part of them was automatically deleted for inactivity last year,” Durov said. The alleged organizers of the attack more often used WhatsApp than Telegram, he added.

Telegram was prohibited in Russia for refusing owners of the service to transfer the FSB to encryption keys to decode user messages. "The keys to decipher the correspondence of all their users neither Telegram nor other messengers could give out with all the desire. This is due to the technical features of encryption in 2018," Durov added