By Slava Tsukerman
Gyulchekhra Bobokulova from Muslim-majority Uzbekistan, a 38-year-old mother of three, for more then three years unofficially worked in Moscow as a nanny of a four-year-old girl who suffered from epilepsy and learning disabilities. The child’s parents considered her reliable and efficient.
On February 29 Bobokulova killed and decapitated the girl at the family’s apartment, put the apartment on fire and proceeded to the metro station October Field. Witnesses reported seeing an agitated woman dressed in black, who, shouting “Allah Akbar” (Arabic for “God is great”), threatened to “blow everyone up”, as she paced up and down waving the child’s severed head. First reaction of the local policemen was to run away. It took police about an hour to arrest the women. Videos of the event immediately appeared in Internet.
Russia’s national television channels for the long time have almost entirely ignored the brutal slaying of the child. Nevertheless due to the Russian press and Internet the event became the biggest Russian sensation of this month.
The press have dubbed Gyulchekhra Bobokulova “the bloody nanny”. Arriving at Moscow court she told journalists that “Allah ordered” the killing. Undated footage later emerged on the Internet showing Bobokulova saying the attack was “revenge” for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bombing campaign in Syria, which began in September.
“I took revenge,” she says in the video, “against the one that spilled blood, Putin was bombing. He was throwing bombs from airplanes. Why are you bombing Muslims? Nobody talks about it. They also want to live.”
After the appearance of the video, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a statement saying Bobokulova has “long been diagnosed with schizophrenia”.
Putin’s press representative Dmitry Peskov stated: “It is obvious that we are talking about a deranged person… One should relate to her words as one would to the words of a deranged person.”
The terrifying Moscow event got coverage by the world media. CNN concluded its article about the event with a comment stressing the point that schizophrenics very rarely commit violent crimes.
It looks like the CNN reporter doesn’t trust Russian official statements.
Neither do many Russians trust the official reports.
Russian Internet presents comments of people finding a lot of questionable and nontraditional details in the reports.
Why did the “bloody nanny” had chosen the space near the metro station October Field, the place, where nationalistic anti–migrants demonstrations usually start, for her performance? Why the space near the metro station almost empty, while normally it is crowded at such hour? Why, nevertheless, did some witnesses with cameras happened to be at the place, but all of them produced videos of very low quality, that make it impossible to tell weather the child’s head was real or fake?
Most of Muscovites have today smart phones with high definition cameras. Why did it took police an hour to arrest Bobokulova, as if they were giving the cameras enough time to record the woman with the child’s head in her hand, but without witnesses, as there were almost no people around her? Doesn’t it all look staged?
Special attention of Internet commenters made much of the fact that the same man, dressed in the same clothes, appeared in Russia Today TV news and a day later in REN TV news as two different persons. In the Russia Today program the man claims to be an eyewitness to the tragedy; in the REN TV program he presents himself as the uncle of the murdered girl.
In the RT news, the bald man in a dark coat and a green sweater states that he witnessed the tragedy that occurred at the exit of the metro October Field:
“She passed me when I went to KFC, and began to shout ‘Allah Akbar! All you will suffer, you all will be hanged!’ At first I thought that child’s head in her hand was fake, but when she passed me, everything became clear. The woman was dressed as Muslims dress – all in black. When I saw this baby’s head face, I began to tremble … “
In the REN TV news, the same man said, barely holding back emotions:
“The woman should be killed. Not just sentenced for life. She is not only burned the body of my niece, she also cut her head off, and she was walking around with this head! I would just tear the woman to pieces. It was my niece, my little piece of happiness!”
A question arises: if the entire “bloody nanny drama” has been staged by some government agency, what would be the purpose for such performance?
The fact that the event was for a long time ignored by the state TV and that government tried to convince Russians that Bobokulova is mentally sick, seems to show Russians that Putin’s government is trying to avoid dangerous growing of the nationalistic and anti–Muslim sentiments in the country. But may its real interest be different?
Many believe that Putin came to power by organizing explosions of buildings in Moscow and blaming them on Chechen terrorists. Acting this way he had convinced Russians to vote for the “tough” President with KGB background.
Now he needs Russians keep believing the same.
And obviously in spite of all conversations about Bobokulova’s schizophrenia, many Russians believe that her actions are the result of “tolerant” attitude of Russians to Muslim migrants. The photo below shows flowers and candles placed by Muscovites at the place were Bobokulova made her speeches. The note states: “Tolerance kills”.
