The body of the 10-year-old Qobiljon Aliyev, who was killed in a school xenophobic attack in Moscow region was returned to Tajikistan today morning.
Qobiljon is accompanied by his mother, Niloufar Aliyeva, and other family members, sources familiar with the situation told Asia-Plus.
Funeral ceremony (janoza) for Qobiljon started in his native village of Ajami in Akram Hasanov jamoat, Shahrinav district at 10:00 a.m.
Aliyev was stabbed to death at his school in the settlement of Gorki-2 by a 15-year-old ninth-grader identified as Timofey K. The assailant brought a knife to school and also attacked a security guard and other students before being apprehended by police. Aliyev was a Tajikistani citizen, and the Tajik government has publicly demanded an “immediate, objective, and impartial investigation” into the boy’s murder, calling it a crime motivated by national hatred.
Before Tuesday’s bloodshed began, Timofey K. approached a group of children and a teacher at the school and asked about their nationality. He recorded this exchange on his phone and later shared it on Telegram. When a security guard advanced, Timofey doused him in pepper spray and stabbed the man before chasing Qobiljon Aliyev up the stairs and fatally wounding him.
Meduza reports that Timofey K. was dressed in gear bearing slogans linked to mass killings. On his vest was the phrase “No Lives Matter,” a term associated with a subculture that imitates mass attackers and far-right groups. Other slogans referred to Anders Breivik’s 2011 Norway attacks and past assaults on schools and places of worship in the United States and New Zealand. Before the attack, he sent classmates a “manifesto” condemning Muslims, Jews, and the left generally, and advocating the need to “correct” the so-called “Great Replacement” — a far-right conspiracy theory claiming that white European populations are deliberately being replaced by non-white peoples, especially from Muslim-majority countries.
The Russian authorities have stopped short of calling the killing a hate crime. Statements by federal investigators have not mentioned a motive.
Neo-Nazism is growing younger in Russia.
This is not the first xenophobia-motivated killing committed by a school-age attacker in Russia this year. The firs occurred in April outside Moscow, in the town of Nekrasovsky. Agenstvo reports that a 14-year-old teenager killed a nine-year-old boy from Kyrgyzstan. Investigators classified the murder as a hate crime based on national origin.
