Woman with Decapitated Child in Moscow

Moscow police have arrested a woman who took the decapitated head of a four-year-old child out of a bag and showed it to people at a metro station. According to the police, this woman was the caregiver of the murdered child. She has been charged with the murder of the four-year-old girl, an incident that has shocked many in Russia. Moments after the woman revealed the child's head at a metro station in northeast Moscow, police apprehended her. CCTV footage from the metro station shows the woman wearing clothing similar to a black hijab and shouting 'I am a terrorist.' Russian media report that eyewitnesses claimed she shouted 'Allahu Akbar.' Police officials told Russian media that the woman is named Gulchehra Babaqulova, 39 years old, and from Uzbekistan. The police plan to subject her to psychological testing. Reports from Russia indicate that in a video of the incident posted online, the woman can be heard shouting in Russian with a Central Asian accent: 'I am a terrorist. I will die, but all of you will pay for your actions.' Moscow police confirmed that the decapitated head belonged to a four-year-old girl whom the woman had been caring for, referred to by Russian media as Nastya M. It appears that the body found before the woman's arrest by firefighters while extinguishing a fire in the victim's family's home may also be the remains of this child. The Russian Federal Investigative Committee stated that it seems after the parents and the older child left the house, this woman killed their younger child and set the apartment on fire. According to a popular Moscow newspaper, it seems that Gulchehra Babaqulova was shouting 'I hate democracy' while showing the child's head. An eyewitness told the newspaper that he and others initially thought the decapitated head was a doll. He added that the woman was shouting: 'They killed my child. I will blow you all up.' The police evacuated the metro station as a precaution but found no explosives with the woman. They do not consider this incident a case of terrorism. A news network closely linked to Russian law enforcement reported that when officers approached the woman and asked for her identification, she took the child's head out of the bag and shouted that she had killed a child. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has not yet commented on the incident. It appears that the murdered girl had some form of mental disability and could not walk. According to Russian media, her family is from western Russia. They told the police that this woman had been working as a babysitter for them for eighteen months. In the past two decades, radical Islamists from the North Caucasus have carried out deadly attacks in various parts of Moscow, but no incident like this has been reported. This incident occurs amid fears of potential retaliatory attacks by the Islamic State group and other Islamists on Russian soil. Reports have also emerged that the rise of the Islamic State group has fueled tensions between some Russians and certain residents from Muslim countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus who come to work.