Three residents of the Stavropol Territory - Kairbek Bakiev, Ilkhan Kanmurzaev and Eldar Mashaev - were sentenced to terms of 14 to 16 years in a maximum security colony. They were found guilty of attacking and killing 33 Russian military personnel during the second Russian-Chechen war.
According to investigators, in 1999, three defendants joined the detachment of field commanders Shamil Basayev and Amir Khattab. And in August of the same year they attacked the military in Dagestan. As a result, 33 people were killed and another 34 were injured.
The defendants were found guilty of several criminal cases at once: participation in a stable armed group and the crimes it committed, participation in an armed rebellion to overthrow the constitutional order, violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, encroachment on the lives of military personnel.
As human rights activists from Memorial noted earlier, the same type of testimony from relatives of Russian military personnel as witnesses is presented in almost all identical criminal cases that were brought against natives of Chechnya. Witnesses repeat the official version using carbon copies.
