A Lithuanian court sentenced three Soviet riot police soldiers to life imprisonment in absentia.

The Vilnius District Court found three former Soviet riot policemen guilty in absentia of murdering police officers and customs officers at the Medininkai checkpoint in 1991. Judge Jolanta Čapukienė sentenced them to life imprisonment, Delfi reports .

Andrei Laktionov, Cheslav Mlynnik and Alexander Ryzhov were found guilty of killing civilians, which was classified as a crime against humanity. The court upheld the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office, obliging the defendants to pay the state 653,850 euros in damages. The relatives of those killed were awarded compensation of 100 thousand euros.

Within 20 days, the verdict can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Lithuania. The verdict was announced without the presence of the accused, who did not participate in the hearings. As Delfi notes, Russia does not cooperate with Lithuania in this matter and does not extradite its citizens, and Lithuanian laws in certain cases allow the case to be considered in the absence of the accused. The Russians' defense asked to acquit them if guilt was not proven, and if they were found guilty, to impose a more lenient punishment than the prosecutor's office proposed, which asked them to be sentenced to life in prison.

The attack on the Medininkai checkpoint on the Lithuanian border with Belarus occurred on July 31, 1991. According to the case materials, the head of the Riga riot police, Mlynnik, gave the order for the attack, and Ryzhov and Laktionov carried it out. Lithuanian police officers Mindaugas Balavakas, Algimantas Juozakas, Juozas Janonis and Algirdas Kazlauskas, as well as customs officers Stanislovas Orlavicius and Antanas Musteikis were killed in the attack. Another customs officer, Richardas Rabavičius, died in hospital on August 2. The case of the attack on the checkpoint was brought to court in December 2013.