Verdict over 2000 attack on Pskov paratroopers takes effect
MOSCOW. 28 (Interfax) - The Russian Supreme Court has upheld a guilty verdict against the militants who were involved in an attack on soldiers from the Pskov Parachute Assault Regiment, in which 84 paratroopers were killed in southern Chechnya.
Three defendants - Rashid Atuov and Khamidul Yapov, both 37 years old, and 43-year-old Kemal Ebzeyev - were found guilty of committing very grave crimes, including banditry and an attack on army servicemen, according to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office which supported the state prosecution at the cassation court.
The court sentenced Yapov and Ebzeyev to 14 years at a high-security prison, and Atuov to 13 years.
The verdict issued by the Chechen Supreme Court in March 2012 has thus taken legal effect, the Prosecutor General's Office said.
Investigators found that the three gangsters were members of illegal armed groups with a total number of 2,000 members operating across Chechnya.
"Between February 29 and March 1, 2000, they committed an attack near the village of Ulus-Kert in the Shato district against servicemen from a parachute assault regiment who were stationed there to fight against the insurgency. The battle lasted for 16 hours, with Atuov, Ebzeyev and Yapov, along with other gangsters, firing from Kalashnikov rifles. Eighty-four paratroopers were killed in the fight, another four were injured," the Prosecutor General's Office said on its website.