Murderers of African student sentenced

In September 2004, the killers of an African student were sentenced.

For a long time, the investigation considered the version of the murder as a result of a personal conflict, denying the nationalistic background of the murder. The official statement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation indicated that “this crime was not committed on ethnic grounds.”

During the investigation, investigators examined four versions of what happened. According to one version of the prosecutor's office, the African was killed because he did not pay drug sellers. According to the second - for not paying the pimps for a prostitute. According to the third, investigators assumed that Amar Lima did not share a certain business with Arab students. And only the fourth version had a nationalist motive.

The story of the attack on 19-year-old Voronezh student Yulia Borzenkova was considered. On February 25, 2004, a medical academy student was brought by ambulance to Voronezh City Hospital No. 8 with a diagnosis of a penetrating knife wound. According to the victim, a black man attacked her with a knife in the arch of a house on Mira Street. In the same arc, African student Amara Lima was killed on February 21, 2004. The police began to consider the version of revenge on the part of blacks. However, on February 28, 2004, the girl changed her testimony. She admitted that she cut herself with a knife. In this way, she “wanted to intimidate her parents, who interfered with her personal life” and forbade her from meeting a young man.

The prosecutor's office was forced to speed up investigative actions by a protest demonstration by Africans studying at universities in Voronezh, which took place on February 24, 2004; students refused to go to classes and demanded to ensure their safety. Later, the Ambassador of Guinea-Bissau and representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office arrived in Voronezh.

The detained teenagers confessed to the murder of Amar Lim, but denied their nationalist version of the murder.

Two of the detainees admitted that they adhered to nationalist views, but they cited boredom as the motive for the murder: one of them had the idea “to take knives, go to Mira Street, where there are many hostels, and kill some black man.” At the trial, they noted that they did not care at all which country the victim was a citizen of. The teenagers, armed with kitchen knives, reached the center of Voronezh by minibus at 14.00 and began to guard a random passerby under the arch of a residential building. It turned out to be Amar Lima. First, all the teenagers beat the African, and then Ledenev and Shishlov took out knives and stabbed him twice. Leaving the student to bleed, the criminals went home.

The prosecutor's office of the Voronezh region found out that Roman Lednev and Evgeny Shishlov were members of the RNU. During the search, the detainees were found to have racist literature, RNU uniforms, patches and notebooks with discussions about the superiority of the white race.

Only at the end of June 2004 did the prosecutor's office complete the investigation of the case, and all three were charged with murder motivated by racial and national hatred.

The court hearings were held behind closed doors. Shishlov admitted his guilt, and then only partially. At the trial, he stated that he killed the student alone, and not out of racial hatred, but out of personal enmity. His lawyer argued that the confessions were extracted by force.

As a result, by decision of the court, Evgeny Shishlov was sentenced to 17 years in a maximum security colony, Roman Ledenev - to 10 years, Vladimir Kokushin - to 9 years in an educational colony. All three convicts must pay financial compensation to the parents of the murdered student.

In addition to this murder, the investigation proved the involvement of one of the accused in the attack on another citizen of Guinea-Bissau, Adilson Ukakra Dos Santos in November 2003.

Lawyers for the accused appealed the verdict in the Moscow court. On January 19, 2005, the Moscow Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the Voronezh court.

Sources

• Gritsenko T. Murderers recognized as racists // Time of News. 2004. October 1
• Prytkov R. Wanted to scare my parents // New News (Voronezh). 2004. March 1
• Teenagers had fun with a black man // Gazeta.ru. 2004. March 19 *