Russian police arrest 9-year-old girl for incitement to terrorism: “Can you kill people for 500,000 rubles?”

Police in the Russian state of Tuva, Siberia, have arrested a nine-year-old girl for allegedly “calling for terrorism” via text messages. The independent Moscow Times reports this.

Screenshots of a text message conversation show the girl asking an unknown number if her conversation partner “can kill people for 500,000 rubles.” That would be a reference to the attack in Moscow, according to the police in Toeva: one of the suspects in the attack would have mentioned the same amount in an interrogation. When the unknown number responded negatively, the girl texted back: “Bye then! We need terrorists, not defenders!”

The girl was arrested by the local police and the FSB security service. In her interrogation, she said that she was simply bored, so she sent some messages to an unknown number. It is not yet clear whether the girl will be prosecuted further for her actions. In Russia, calling for terrorism can lead to a prison sentence of seven years. Her mother was already accused of “poor upbringing” and was given a note on her criminal record.