Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Were the Tajiks who carried out a mass shooting at a Russian training ground on 15 October forcibly mobilised against their will? Reports from Russian and Tajik-language media suggest this may indeed have been the case, though much still remains uncertain. 🧵 follows.

2/ Vlasti reports that male citizens of Tajikistan who are resident in Russia have been disappearing abruptly, causing their relatives to fear that they had been forcibly mobilised. One of the shooters, 24-year-old Ehson Aminzoda (pic above), may have been among them.

3/ Aminzoda is reported to be the son of a former high-ranking Tajik government official. He had been working in a restaurant in Moscow for several months and was saving money for a wedding, as he was engaged to a woman in Tajikistan. He did not have Russian citizenship.

4/ Aminzoda's relatives say he had no intention of going to war. They said that he "disappeared" on 10 October near the Lyublino metro station in the south-east of Moscow. The family received news of his death from the Russian authorities on 16 October.

5/ According to Radio Ozodi, Aminzoda's relatives last heard from him on 10 October, when he told them he was going to visit friends at Lyublino. Friends said he had been stopped by the police.

6/ Friends and family have said he was not in any way a radical. His brother says Aminzoda was "an ordinary immigrant who wanted to work and build his life". He was informed of Aminzoda's death the day after the mass shooting.

7/ After Aminzoda disappeared, his friends "all looked for him and thought he had gone to his acquaintances or returned to Tajikistan He was not radical, he was no different from other young people. Had he been an Islamic radical, he would never have worked in a restaurant."

8/ According to the official version, Aminzoda was voluntarily mobilised by the military registration and enlistment office of Moscow's Chertanovsky district, about 10 km from Lyublino. However, there have been many reports of police indiscriminately taking men for mobilisation.

9/ Judging from these reports, it seems likely that Aminzoda was seized by the police and taken forcibly to the mobilisation office, where he was enlisted despite not being eligible (as a non-Russian citizen). There have been many reports of eligibility rules being flouted.

10/ I predicted a few days ago that it would emerge that the shooters would be from Moscow or St P., would have been forcibly mobilised and would have been in a low-income manual job. It seems that this may have been the case for Aminzoda at least. /end

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1581578819298742273?s=20&t=otz1O2AEaqIeQ6P65Fin6g

Sources:
🔹 vlasti.info/news/51012-sta…
🔹 vlasti.info/news/51014-lic…
🔹 ozodi.org/a/32087649.html
🔹 t.me/sotaproject/48…

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1583002…

The "Operational Reports" Telegram channel has also published what is said to be Aminzoda's military identification record. As can be seen, it records his enlistment date as 11 October, only a few days before the mass shooting.
t.me/opersvodki/9850

More on the other reported shooter:

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1583414339377119232?t=iDySYJ-hrEtfgWhNooz7aA&s=19