Suspected Black Widow Terrorist Spotted in Downtown Sochi

Russia’s “black widow” issue is not going away. Officials are now looking for Ruzana “Salima” Ibragimova, widow of a former member of a Caucasian militant group. She was recently spotted in Sochi, where the Olympic Games are set to begin on February 7th.

As promised, after a December 2013 black widow attack in Volgograd, Russian officials are beefing up their investigation and security in order to find Ibragimova and other suspected terrorists ahead of the Olympics. This has led to allegations of police harassment from locals, including those working on the Sochi Game, among other criticism.

As we have recently learned, female suicide bombers from the Caucasus regions of Chechnya and Dagestan are responsible for a disproportionate amount of terrorist attacks in Russia. Many experts have called them “black widows,” and believe that their motives stem in large part from culturally-sanctioned ways of expressing their grief and frustration over loved ones being jailed or killed during the Caucasus’s separatist fighting. The consideration of this root cause has also cast doubt over whether extra security – while necessary in the short term – will solve Russia’s particular terrorist problem.