Russia detains woman suspected of funding IS

Russian officers have detained a woman suspected of raising funds for the Islamic State (IS), the Russian Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service (FSB) said Friday.

The 32-year-old woman, a resident of the southern Russian Astrakhan Region, is accused of being one of the organizers of a secret IS cell, the committee said in a statement.

The detainee had managed to collect at least 1 million rubles (about 15,000 U.S. dollars) since 2016, which she placed on bank cards and sent the details via a Telegram channel to a founder of an Islamic fund banned in Russia.

The committee said it had opened a criminal case against the suspect on the grounds of assisting terrorist activities in the form of financing.

The FSB said in a separate statement that the detainee had also distributed extremist audio and video materials in her Telegram channel and planned to go to Syria to commit a terrorist attack.