MOSCOW. Nov 28 (Interfax) - Law enforcement agencies in Dagestan have put an end to the activity of the "Sharapovskiye" gang, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB)'s public relations center told Interfax.
"The gang had over 250 members, including Dagestani Interior Ministry officers (who were on active duty in 2007-2015), lawyers of the Dagestani Bar Association, and members of terrorist cells," the spokesman said.
According to the FSB, the gang committed a series of murders of businessmen and law enforcement officers, abductions, extortions, assaults and robberies in the period between 2007 and 2015.
Investigators uncovered details of the plotting and perpetration of a terror attack in Makhachkala in 1998 which killed several dozen people and inflicted heavy injuries on over a hundred.
Main organizers and perpetrators of the crimes have been detained, the FSB said.
Long sentences have been pronounced on a number of gang members, and those in hiding have been put on the wanted list, the FSB said.
A substantial amount of small arms, automatic weapons, ammunition, explosives, and anti-tank missile systems have been seized from the illegal possession. Explosive devices have been defused and destroyed onsite in accordance with the standard procedure, it said.
The FSB busted the gang together with the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee.
Yulia Ivanova of the Moscow branch of the Russian Investigative Committee told Interfax, for her part, that four accomplices of the gang were detained in Dagestan and Moscow in the period between August and November 2019.
Investigative procedures are continuing in order to identify every person involved in those crimes, Ivanova said.