| The press service of the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region yesterday announced the arrest of another, seventh suspect in the case of the murder of State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova. Vyacheslav Lelyavin, the elder brother of Igor Lelyavin, accused of organizing this high-profile political murder, is now accused of complicity in the crime. The trial in this case has been ongoing in the St. Petersburg City Court since December 2003. Previously, Vyacheslav Lelyavin was a witness, but during the investigation, investigators found grounds to suspect him of involvement in the assassination attempt on the deputy. Investigators intend to charge him with two articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - encroachment on the life of a statesman or public figure and wiretapping of telephone conversations using technical means. The detention of the new defendant took place quite routinely - during another interrogation by the investigator. Lelyavin Sr. was placed in a pre-trial detention center of the FSB. Yesterday at the trial, one of the accused, Alexei Voronin, told the court that all the defendants had undergone training at firing ranges and shooting ranges in shooting from various types of weapons, including rifles and machine guns. At the same time, Voronin added, his accomplices, having learned about the testimony he gave during the preliminary investigation, either tried to intimidate him, or promised a generous reward after leaving prison if he refused to testify. However, the accused repeated his testimony at the trial. Voronin in general turned out to be a real gift for justice - after all, from him the judges heard about how video surveillance of Starovoytova’s house was organized, bugging of her entrance, the meeting of trains and planes from Moscow, as well as the direct departure of the killers to the embankment of the Griboyedov Canal. In addition to the six defendants, six more people are still wanted in the Starovoitova case. Dmitry ANDREEV, St. Petersburg
The poet's repentance
On Monday, one of Shamil Basayev’s closest accomplices, Abdulla Aliyev, also known under the pseudonym Adallo, surrendered to the authorities of Dagestan. Aliyev flew from the Turkish city of Yalova, where he had lived for the last few years, and turned himself in to the Dagestan prosecutor's office. In 1999, after the invasion of Chechen separatists in Dagestan, a criminal case was opened against him under Art. 279 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “armed rebellion”, although Aliyev himself did not participate in the invasion. At the end of the 60s, Aliyev graduated from the Literary Institute. Gorky. For some time he was a member of the CPSU, but was expelled from the ranks of the party “for moral and everyday decay.” He wrote under the pseudonym Adallo, but refused his own name, since in the Avar dialect Abdullah is translated as “slave of Allah.” However, in the early 90s, the former atheist Aliyev became an ardent Islamist, in 1994 he began publishing the newspaper “Banner of Islam” and advanced so much in the field of propaganda of Wahhabi ideas that he received a personalized award pistol from Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. In addition, he published a poetry collection “Dialogues with Adallo” and a book “Adallo”, containing violent attacks on “wrong Muslims” and the Russian people. Now Abdulla Aliyev has once again radically changed his views and is ready to publicly condemn the Chechen separatists and make an official apology to the Dagestan people for the 1999 invasion. Considering the poet's advanced age - 72 years old, he was left free, having taken a written undertaking not to leave the place. The Dagestan prosecutor's office noted that turning himself in will significantly affect the mitigation of Aliyev's sentence, the extent of which will have to be decided by the court. Konstantin FILATOV
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