NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - The brother and sister of the suicide bomber who killed 37 people at Russia's busiest airport have been charged, along with a third alleged accomplice, a defence lawyer said Wednesday.
The trio are now expected to stand trial on charges of terrorism, banditry and the trafficking and making of weapons, lawyer Umar Khayauri told Reuters.
Magomed Yevloyev, 20, from Ingushetia in Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus, detonated explosives at Domodedovo airport on January 24. Analysts say the attack was proof the Kremlin has failed to quell a bubbling Islamist insurgency.
"They have been charged in connection with the Domodedovo blast," Khayauri said, referring to client Akhmed Aushev as well as Yevloyev's siblings Akhmed, 22, and Fatima, 16.
The three were arrested two weeks after the bombing in their village of Ali-Yurt, southeast of Ingushetia's biggest city Nazran.
A decade after Russian federal forces threw separatists out of power in the second war in Chechnya, the North Caucasus remains plagued by violence with rebels seeking to carve out a separate Islamic state under sharia law.
Despite Moscow pouring billions of dollars into the region, President Dmitry Medvedev has said violence has risen.
Islamist leader Doku Umarov, who said he ordered the attack, has since threatened a year of "blood and tears" before Russia's 2012 presidential elections, saying he had dozens of suicide bombers ready to unleash on Russian cities.
The mother of the bomber has said she is ashamed of her son's attack on the airport and has apologised.
Khayauri said he believed Aushev was innocent as he "was far away from such ideas," he said, referring to Islamist extremism.
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing by Mark Heinrich)
