Defence of convicts in the case of attack on Ingushetia in 2004 to appeal against the sentence

Relatives and advocates of the convicts categorically disagree with the verdicts passed by the Stavropol Territorial Court yesterday, on February 2, to 12 natives of Ingushetia and Chechnya, found guilty of committing attack on subdivisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the Republic of Ingushetia in the summer of 2004.

From the very start of the inquiry, relatives and defence lawyers insisted that the criminal case against all the defendants was fabricated, while the investigation and the trial have been held with gross violations of the current legislation.

The advocates find the court's connivance in the fact that nowhere in the case files application of torture to defendants was reflected; this fact should have annulled all their confessional evidences. Also, the defence complains that the court failed to account for some of the evidences presented by advocates. For example, the court failed to add to the case files the evidences certifying that the defendant Beibulat Amirkhanov on the day of the militants' attack in 2004 was taking his exam at the local university. The defence claims that they had presented plenty of such evidences, which were not entered into the case files.

Batyr Akhilgov, advocate of Murad Esmurziev, sentenced to 25 years in prison, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the whole base of proofs of the case was built on defendants' confessions. "Although we have evidences of their innocence, the court has ignored them," said the defender.

Timur Akiev, head of the Ingush office of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial", also believes the decision of the court to be one-sided. Several lawyers of the HRC presented the interests of the defendants in the "Case of 12", while Mr Akiev himself figured at the trial as a witness.

"We believe that the court failed to consider the circumstances, about which we told them. These circumstances comprise all the violations admitted since the start of detention and through the trial stages. These are kidnappings, torture during the inquiry and cancellation of the trial by jury, which was illegally annulled with gross violations; while the case was unreasonably transferred for consideration to another region. All these circumstances should have been taken into account by the court and tell on the sentence," the human rights activist has noted.

Rosa Gombotova, mother of Akromat Gombotov, sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment treated the verdict of the court as "outrage."

Although the trial was open; and journalists were admitted, for some reason not all the relatives were let in. Every family member was accompanied by a guard and carefully searched. We will definitely challenge the verdict, up to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)," said Rosa Gombotova.

Radimkhan Amirkhanova, mother of the convicted Beibulat Amirkhanov, also complained that all the complaints of the defence against violations during the inquiry and trial were not reflected in the materials of the case.

Tamara Mutalieva, mother of another convict, said that in fact there were no witnesses and no other evidence against her son in the case.

The defendants themselves reacted rather coolly to their fate - already during announcement of the sentence they began demonstratively sitting down; and Adam Mutaliev tried to unfold his prayer mat, but there was not enough room for that in the cage.

As reported by Ekaterina Danilova, senior assistant of the head of the Investigatory Department for the Stavropol Territory of the ICPO, in the course of the investigation all the 12 defendants pled guilty of their crimes under the pressure of the evidences gathered by the investigation, but during the trial they changed their stand and all denied their involvement in the crimes. Nevertheless, according to her story, "the gathered evidences were enough to prove their involvement in such cruel and cynical crimes."

The representative of the Prosecutor's Office gave no comment on the verdict.