“We ask God that you make it to Palestine so you could fight the Jews face to face in an endless religious war,” he said.
Eleven people were arrested in the first 24 hours after the shooting and eight of them, including the four suspected gunmen, have been placed in pre-trial detention. Seven are from the Central Asian state of Tajikistan and the other from Kyrgyzstan.
World must beware the fallout from terror attack in Moscow
World must beware the fallout from terror attack in Moscow
The Kremlin on Thursday told Telegram owner Pavel Durov to be more attentive after the messaging app was allegedly used to help recruit the gunmen who attacked the concert hall.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media site Life that there were no plans to block the messaging app, a major disseminator of news in Russia and around the world, but that Durov should be more attentive.
“We would expect more attention from Pavel Durov, because this unique and phenomenal resource from a technological point of view, which has grown, in fact, before the eyes of our generation, is increasingly becoming a tool in the hands of terrorists – used for terrorist purposes,” Peskov said.
Durov, in a post appearing later on Telegram, said measures had been taken immediately to stop what he said had been a flurry of unknown users posting messages appearing to call for new acts of violence.
“As a result, tens of thousands of attempts to send such messages were intercepted and thousands of users taking part in this flashmob came up against a permanent block on their Telegram accounts,” Durov wrote.
From next week, Durov said, users would be able to limit the number of people able to send them personal messages and artificial intelligence mechanisms would be introduced to filter out unwanted communication.
“Telegram is no place for spam mail or calls for violence,” Durov wrote.
RIA state news agency said the attackers had been recruited via a radical channel on Telegram belonging to the Islamic State Khorasan (Isis-K) group.
Durov is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of US$15.5 billion.