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MOSCOW, Russia - The man who has emerged as the initial suspect over the suicide bombing at Moscow Domodedovo airport lived in south Russia and was converted to Islam by an ethnic Russian imam, a report said Friday.

Police reportedly honed in on Vitaly Razdobudko after connecting him with Islamist militant group Nogaisky Dzhamaat and a December 31 blast in Moscow where a would-be female suicide bomber accidentally blew herself up.

Investigators said Razdobudko has been missing from his apartment in the southern resort town of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region since last November along with his wife and a newborn baby.

Razdobudko, 32, converted from Christianity and adopted Islam when he was a student in the local technical university. He was formally converted by a local imam in Pyatigorsk, a Russian named Anton Stepanenko, the report said.

Stepanenko, whose Muslim name is Abdullah, was convicted of holding a man captive in 2006, and police found Wahhabist literature, audio and video materials, as well as a manual on explosives, in his home.