Translated material
Weapons suppliers to nationalists from BORN were sentenced
In Vyborg, a court sentenced three people who sold weapons to members of the Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN). Igor Seleznev received three years and four months in prison; Vladimir Lapin and Dmitry Rodionov were sentenced to three years and three months in prison.
They all pleaded not guilty. Their case was considered in a special order without examining the evidence.
One of the leaders of BORN, Nikita Tikhonov, who shot lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, said that Dmitry Steshin, an employee of Komsomolskaya Pravda, introduced him to Volodya and Mitya. At the same time, Steshin did not appear in the case.
A member of the Black Hawks gang Rasul Khalilov, anti-fascist Ivan Khutorskoy and judge Eduard Chuvashov were killed from weapons purchased from “gunsmith men” (as Tikhonov called the suppliers).
The wife of one of the accused, Igor Seleznev, said that in 2009 she and her husband watched a story about the murder of Markelov. Seeing a young man with a pistol caught in the lens of surveillance cameras, Seleznev changed his face, but did not stop selling weapons.
Announcing the verdict, Judge Mazurov complained about "the quality of the investigation, which is falling." According to the judge, weapons and ammunition came from excavations on the Karelian Isthmus, but the text of the indictment did not mention either the method or the specific site of the excavations.
- BORN is a nationalist group that is responsible for a series of murders. Most of the BORN members are convicted. Tikhonov is serving a life sentence. The alleged leader of the organization, Ilya Goryachev, who himself was not involved in any of the murders, but is considered their mastermind, was also sentenced to life.