The "GTA gang" (Russian: банда ГТА; Banda GTA) is the nickname given to a violent gang of murderers and terrorists located near Moscow, Russia that robbed and murdered occupants of automobiles traveling on the Federal Automobile Road M-4 after stopping them using homemade caltrops. The Russian media dubbed them the "GTA gang" because of the similarity between their violent robberies and the actions of characters in the Grand Theft Auto video game series.
Formed in March 2012 by Ibaydullo Subkhanov to train soldiers for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the gang was ultimately apprehended after a gunfight with police in the village of Udelnaya, near Moscow, on 6 November 2014, during which the gang members were captured and Subkhanov was killed. The gang was responsible for seventeen murders and two serious injuries in Moscow Oblast and Kaluga Oblasts, over the course of two and a half years.
Membership
Leader
Ibaydullo Subkhanov (also known as Rustam Usmanov) is an Uzbek and a citizen of Osh, Kan. He arrived in Russia in 2004 and moved in with an older woman named Barakt Khasanova at a staff house in Udelnaya. Later, a younger woman named Ranohon Khasanova, who was his unofficial wife, also moved in, accompanied by two daughters from previous relationships. Ranohon Khasanova and her children disappeared on the night of the firefight on 6 November, and are still wanted internationally.
Subkhanov became a radical Islamist in 2011, and later fought for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Syrian Civil War. When Subkhanov returned to Russia, he met some Tajiks who were members of an extremist pan-Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. Later, Subkhanov worked as a house/villa servant for a top official in the federal office of the Prosecutor General of Russia, Alexei Staroverov, who had owned the villa since 2010. Subkhanov's mother reportedly also worked in the official's home. Subkhanov was killed by a police sniper during a gunfight on 6 November 2014 at the age of 32.
Timeline of events
Early activity
The gang was founded by Kyrgyz national Ibaydullo Subkhanov in Udelnaya in March 2012. Believing a revolution would soon take place in Uzbekistan, Subkhanov, operating under the alias Rustam Usmanov, established a self-proclaimed jamaat (gathering) in order to train soldiers for ISIL. As a form of training, Subkhanov would take new members along with him on missions during which they were forced to murder victims as a way of proving their dedication to the cause.
In September 2013, a motorist was killed along the M9 highway. The following month, another man was killed near the town of Istra, and in December, the bodies of four men were discovered in a cabin north of the capital, all suffering from gunshot wounds.
Late into the night of 2 May 2014, an elderly couple, Anatoly and Tatyana Lebedev, were ambushed and killed along the road. The only item reported stolen was an iPad, even though a wallet was clearly visible on the dashboard.
On 30 June 2014, Alexei Tsyganov, a 53-year-old man from Tula Oblast, was found shot dead from his car from Moscow.
On 18 August 2014, the tenth victim of the gang's activities, 31-year-old Albert Yusupov, was found dead along the A-108 motorway. He had called a friend about a burst tire hours before his body was found. The story attracted widespread attention in the media, as all of the victims were killed with 9mm bullets, and their vehicles had been damaged by homemade caltrops.
Media speculation
The Russian media reported on several theories concerning the gang's origins. Some expressed the belief that the killers were satanists because of the black, crucifix-shaped caltrops used in the attacks.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, theorised the gangsters were Ukrainian nationalists, attempting subversive tactics against the Russian state.
Well known psychologist Mikhail Vinogradov (who worked in the police force during the Soviet era) suggested, after studying photos and videos of the gang leader and two gang members from surveillance cameras, that the gang was composed of experienced professionals from special forces, or former members of some other authority.