Why did Uzbek nanny Gyulchekhra Bobokulova call out “Allahu akbar” — by now almost a cliché of the jihadist terrorist — and threaten to blow herself up after she decapitated her four-year-old ward in north-west Moscow last month? And why did the official media show such unusual delicacy in covering the case so cursorily, or not at all?
While Bobokulova is undoubtedly mentally unstable rather than a cold-eyed assassin, it is impossible to know what was going through her mind. But if she was not radicalised as such, she had clearly been exposed to the memes of modern terrorism.
More to the point, the Russian authorities’ eagerness to sweep the case under the shroud, and especially avoid any reference to the “t” word (terrorism), illustrates a growing concern within Russia’s security apparatus about the risk of terrorism unconnected with the North Caucasus.
