Translated material
Soft and strict
The former son-in-law of the head of Karachay-Cherkessia was sentenced
The Supreme Court of Karachay-Cherkessia (KCR) yesterday completed the announcement of the verdict in the case of Ali Kaitov, the former son-in-law of the President of the Republic Mustafa Batdyev, who, along with 15 of his assistants, was accused of murdering seven Circassian businessmen . This investigation became the cause of a whole series of high-profile scandals - relatives of the murdered people staged riots, seized the republic's administration building, later KCR prosecutor Vladimir Ganochkin wrote a letter of resignation , the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Alexander Obukhov was transferred to another region.The reading of the verdict lasted three days, and in her decision, presiding judge Natalya Zaderyakina agreed with all points of the state prosecution against the defendants in the case, except that they were committed by an organized criminal group. The court rejected the defendants' version that they did not attack, but were defending themselves from armed businessmen. The court also rejected the defendants' statements that they gave confessions during the preliminary investigation under torture. Of the 16 defendants in the case, the court found eight, including Kaitov, guilty of murder. Both the accused and the victims disagreed with the court's decision. The first were not satisfied with the sentence imposed on Ali Kaitov - 17 years in a maximum security colony. The defendants' lawyers stated that the trial was fabricated and was of a political nature. Both sides announced their intention to appeal the verdict.
According to the investigation, on the night of October 11, 2004, a bloody tragedy broke out at the dacha of local parliament deputy and general director of Kavkazcement JSC Ali Kaitov. Seven young men from respected families in the republic came to Kaitov - deputy of the People's Assembly of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Rasul Bogatyrev, Magomed Baichorov, Ruslan and Magomed Uzdenov, Zamir Khapaev, Shamil Kubanov and Robert Geryugov - and disappeared without a trace. The police officers who went to the scene of the emergency stated that they did not find any traces of a crime. However, about 300 indignant relatives of the missing forced their way to Kaitov’s cottage, where they found shell casings and blood. Demanding to start an investigation, they seized the Government House of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic in Cherkessk. Only after this was a criminal case initiated, and investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office discovered the burned remains of entrepreneurs in an abandoned mine.
Kaitov hid from the investigation, but later he himself appeared at the FSB. Together with him, 15 more accomplices were charged - his guards and policemen who “worked” for Kaitov. Moreover, in addition to the investigation into the murder itself, the Prosecutor General’s Office also opened a criminal case of negligence against employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic.
During the trial, the accused retracted their confessions given during the investigation allegedly under torture. They stated that they shot the entrepreneurs in self-defense.
But the court agreed with the prosecution’s arguments that it was a murder that took place and that it was motivated by Kaitov’s desire to acquire shares of the Circassian chemical plant that belonged to businessmen. To do this, entrepreneurs were invited to their dacha and offered to sell their assets for next to nothing. When they refused, Kaitov gave the order to shoot the guests.
By court decision, Ali Kaitov was found guilty of organizing the murder and sentenced to 17 years in prison. His friends Tamerlan Bostanov and Azamat Akbaev were sentenced to life imprisonment, German Ismailov - to 16 years. Employees of the Afina private security company Dmitry Davydov (14 years), Konstantin Romanenko (15 years) and employees of the OVO of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Stanislav Ilyinsky (8.5 years) and Nikolai Sobolev (9 years) also received impressive sentences. On the night of the murder, they guarded the dacha and Kaitov himself.
Nikolai Dremlyuk and Anatoly Shulga, who at that time also worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, received suspended sentences. Four more - private security company employees Mikhail Shulzhenko, Nyur-Akhmat Salpagarov, Igor Punenkov, Valery Shekhovtsov and the caretaker of Kaitov's dacha Nikolai Fedorets - were sentenced by the court to two years in prison, and after the statute of limitations had expired, they were released right in the courtroom. All of them were accused of covering up the crime.
Defenders of the convicts immediately announced their intention to appeal the verdict. “It was a domestic conflict that acquired a political overtone,” said Kaitov’s lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, recalling that there was a video recording in the case that captured how seven armed men arrived at the Kavkazcement campsite and began a shootout. But the court did not accept it as material evidence.
In turn, victims’ advocate Vladimir Povtanyuk said that “some victims consider the sentence too lenient.” In addition, the victims demanded a ruling against President Mustafa Batdyev , accusing him of obstructing an objective investigation of the case. But the court did not grant this request.