Unforgiven

The Supreme Court upheld the sentence of the former son-in-law of the President of Karachay-Cherkessia

The Supreme Court (SC) of the Russian Federation yesterday upheld the sentence of the former son-in-law of the President of Karachay-Cherkessia Ali Kaitov , who was sentenced late last year by the Supreme Court of the republic to 17 years in prison for organizing the murder of seven people. The Supreme Court sentenced seven more alleged accomplices to the massacre to significant terms of imprisonment. Two of them - Kaitov's friends - Tamerlan Bostanov and Azamat Akbaev received life sentences. The defense insisted on overturning the sentence because it considered it illegal and unfounded. In their opinion, Ali Kaitov did not organize any conspiracy to kill his enemies, and the tragedy occurred only because the president’s relatives were attacked, they defended themselves, and if they had not shot first, they themselves would have been dead.

As the Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported , the scandalous story that tarnished the reputation of the President of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Mustafa Batdyev occurred three years ago, on the night of October 11, 2004, at the dacha of his son-in-law Ali Kaitov in the Kavkazcement campsite. As the investigation established and was later confirmed by the Supreme Court of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic in its verdict, on that fateful night, Deputy of the People’s Assembly of the Republic Rasul Bogatyrev and six other young people, who came from noble clans, came to the campsite to resolve a dispute about the shares of JSC Chemical Association named after. Tsakhilov,” over which Kaitov’s relatives gained control. In the morning, neighbors at the campsite heard machine gun fire, but Bogatyrev and his comrades were never seen at home. The authorities remained deathly silent about what happened, and then an indignant crowd took to the streets of Cherkessk and began to rally, demanding that the president of the republic give them an explanation. People stormed Batdyev's residence and demanded his resignation. Only the then plenipotentiary representative of the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak, who urgently arrived in the capital of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, was able to calm the people. A criminal case into the shooting of seven young people was opened only ten days after the incident. And soon Ali Kaitov (with whom President Batdyev got rid of his relationship, since his daughter immediately divorced him) and seven alleged participants in the massacre were arrested.

The KCR Supreme Court began considering the case in mid-January 2005, and the verdict was announced in December 2006. The court found that Kaitov had a hostile attitude toward Bogatyrev, wanted to take revenge on him for past grievances, and specially called him to his dacha to inflict reprisals on him. At the same time, he gave appropriate instructions to his friends, employees of the Afina private security company and the OVO of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, who were guarding the campsite, on what, how and by whom should be done. Depending on the degree of participation in the execution, each received his own sentence: Bostanov and Akbaev - life imprisonment, German Ismailov - 16 years of maximum security, employees of the Afina private security company Dmitry Davydov and Konstantin Romanenko - 14 and 15 years, respectively, employees of the public education institution Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Stanislav Ilyinsky and Nikolai Sobolev - eight and a half and nine years, respectively. Several other people received minor sentences for covering up the crime. These are two employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Nikolai Dremlyuk and Anatoly Shulga, sentenced to two years' probation, as well as four employees of a private security company, released from punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. Only these four did not appeal the sentence imposed on them. The rest turned to the RF Armed Forces.

The convicts and their lawyers insisted that there was no murder. Bogatyrev and six of his comrades, according to their version, arrived at the campsite themselves in cars loaded with weapons: TT pistols, Kalashnikov assault rifles and Mukha grenade launchers. As Kaitov’s lawyer, Mikhail Botvinkin, and Bostanov’s lawyer, Vyacheslav Tsymbal, said at a meeting of the Supreme Court, several witnesses testified that they saw Bogatyrev before he went to the dacha to the president’s son-in-law, and at the same time he was “drunk, angry, annoyed, swore at Bostanov and said that he would deal with him.” The lawyers assured that there were no hostile relations between Kaitov and Bogatyrev; on the contrary, they could even be called friendly. According to them, the murdered man had a conflict only with Bostanov. The lawyers argued that the people of the deputy of the People's Assembly were the first to start shooting, while he was sitting at the same table with Kaitov and drinking tea. “When the first shots rang out, Bogatyrev pulled out his pistol, and if Bostanov had not fired first, he would have been killed himself,” Mr. Tsymbal said. He insisted that his client’s actions should be qualified as necessary defense.

Lawyer Botvinkin blamed the Supreme Court of the KCR for refusing to include in the case materials a videotape that supposedly captured all the events of that tragic night and which clearly shows who started shooting first. This recording, according to Mr. Tsymbal, was made by the head of the Athena private security company, but he hid it from the preliminary investigation, since his brother was wanted in connection with suspicion of involvement in committing a murder, so the existence of the video became known only in the midst of Kaitov’s trial. Despite the fact that the lawyers attached an expert opinion on its authenticity to the tape, a representative of the Prosecutor General's Office said yesterday that it could not be included in the case, since the fact of its forgery cannot be ruled out. “During the preliminary investigation, law enforcement officers carefully studied all the videotapes that were in the campsite, but all recordings on them were erased,” the state prosecutor said. The Supreme Court agreed with the prosecutor's opinion and did not attach the tape to the case.

Valery Tsymbal, in addition, insisted that Kaitov’s case should not have been considered by the Supreme Court of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic at all, since it was “politicized.” “While Islam Burlakov was the chairman of the Supreme Court of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, this case could not be considered there, since he at one time aspired to be the president of the republic,” said the lawyer, but presiding judge Alexander Botni interrupted him: “Keep your opinions to yourself, they are not relevant to the case, and we don’t want to hear it.”

The state prosecution asked the court as a whole to uphold the verdict of the Supreme Court of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, considering the guilt of those convicted of murder fully proven, and the defense’s arguments about self-defense as far-fetched. But a representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office asked to exclude from the verdict the charge of illegal acquisition and storage of weapons, since, in her opinion, there was no reliable evidence that it was committed by Kaitov and his accomplices.

This is exactly the decision that the Supreme Court made - it recognized the verdict passed by the Supreme Court of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic as legal and justified, with the exception of the charge of illegal acquisition and storage of weapons. But this exception had no effect on the sentences given to Kaitov and his accomplices. The lawyers responded to this by declaring their intention to file a supervisory complaint and did not rule out the possibility of appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.

Ekaterina BUTORINA, Yulia MAKSIMOVA