A 67-year-old woman was sentenced to 10 years for setting fire to a military registration and enlistment office at the direction of telephone scammers.

The First Western District Military Court sentenced 67-year-old Pyaterochka cashier Zhumagul Kurbanova to 10 years in prison for setting fire to a military registration and enlistment office. She was found guilty of a terrorist attack that caused significant property damage (Part 2 of Article 205 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by the St. Petersburg publication Rotunda.

According to the prosecution, on August 1, a certain Alexander Kastrov contacted Kurbanova via messenger, who offered her to set fire to the military registration and enlistment office for a reward. The woman agreed and on the same day threw a Molotov cocktail at the military commissariat building on Anglisky Avenue in St. Petersburg. As a result, the front door to the building caught fire. The fire was quickly extinguished and no one was injured. Kurbanova was detained the next day.

At first she was charged with intentional damage to someone else's property (Article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), but then the charge was toughened, reclassifying the crime as a terrorist attack.

Kurbanova herself said in court that she had become a victim of telephone scammers. They called her and, introducing themselves as bank employees, forced her to take out a loan for 200 thousand rubles. Later, Kurbanova was contacted by other unknown people who said that they were employees of the FSB and the Investigative Committee. They offered her to set fire to the military registration and enlistment office in exchange for repayment of the loan and a reward of 50 thousand rubles. At the same time, Kurbanova was assured that with her actions she would help the security forces catch the scammers.

The woman stated that she did not want to kill anyone, and drew the court’s attention to the fact that she compensated for the damage she caused by paying more than 90 thousand rubles.

To receive the main news faster, subscribe to our telegram and Twitter .