The trial of 19 suspects -- several from Tajikistan -- in last year's terror attack on the Crocus City Hall entertainment center just outside Moscow began on August 4 amid a backlash on Central Asian immigrants sparked by the assault.
The March 2024 attack left more than 140 people dead and more than 550 injured in the worst such attack in Russia in years. The Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), known to recruit mainly among Central Asians, claimed responsibility for the attack.
According to court documents, the four men accused of being present at the attack -- all Tajik nationals -- and 15 accomplices face charges of assisting, training, organizing, and participating in a terror attack.
A three-judge panel at the Second Western District Military Court will hear the case, which was open to the public on August 4. Experts say they expect that the main hearings during the trial where evidence will be given will be held behind closed doors.
Rights activists say they fear the trial will not be fair given the four suspects captured a day after the attack bore signs -- one appeared to have had an ear cut off -- of having been beaten by police.
"In normal democratic countries, this would never happen - confessions were beaten out of people accused of a terrorist attack and they (the authorities) don't even hide it," human rights activist Karimjon Yorov told RFE/RL's Russian service.
Others questioned whether the accomplices rounded up had actually committed criminal offenses, saying that police were employing a guilt-by-association mentality.
Police have charged some with renting apartments to those allegedly involved
"In my opinion, they simply recruited scapegoats," said Gennady Gudkov, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer, who also was once a deputy in the State Duma and one of the few Russian politicians critical of the Kremlin.
"It is difficult to understand the degree of their guilt. I have the impression that this trial is an excuse for not conducting a real investigation."
The ethnicity of the attackers -- who appeared to have been beaten when they first appeared in court in March 2024 -- has sparked a surge in ethnic profiling and arbitrary arrests of Central Asians in Russia as well as increased instances of xenophobia and cruelty by far-right nationalist groups.
Russian authorities amended legislation in the summer of 2024 to give the police more powers to expel migrants without court orders.
Meanwhile, a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report highlighted video evidence of coordinated physical assaults by young Slavic-looking men on Central Asian men working in construction, maintenance, and service sectors.
"While failing to condemn these xenophobic actions, Russian authorities have also intensified their targeting of Central Asian migrants," HRW said in the March 2025 report.
Russia depends heavily on migrant labor, with close to 3.3 million workers from Central Asia working in Russia in 2024.
Despite their importance to the economy, Russian officials continue to ratchet up pressure on those entering the country from Central Asia.
Officials say they are preparing to launch a sweeping new system in September that will combine biometric registration, location tracking, and intensified police oversight to monitor migrant workers.
The program marks the latest phase in the Kremlin's tightening grip on migration under the banner of national security and social order.
The Crocus City Hall attack was the worst terrorist incident in Russian since the 2004 Beslan school siege in which 333 people, many of them children, were killed.
