AKIPRESS.COM - A court in Moscow has handed lengthy prison terms to six Tajik nationals charged with an attempt to bomb a minibus, the RFE/RL said.

In a February 22 ruling, the Moscow Regional Military Court sentenced the six men to prison terms ranging from 12 to 18 years after convicting them of plotting a terrorist attack, being members of a terrorist group, and illegal possession of explosives.

Four of the men pleaded guilty and two pleaded partially guilty.

Investigators said at the trial that the defendants planned to set off a bomb inside a minibus in the Moscow suburb of Lyubertsy in 2016.

Investigators claimed the defendants were loyal to the extremist group Islamic State (IS) and planned to join IS militants in Syria after the attack.

Officials say thousands of men and women from Russia and other former Soviet republics have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join IS in recent years.

Rights activists in Russia say that migrants from Tajikistan and other Central Asian states have little access to effective legal representation or protection from unjust treatment by the authorities.