Dagestani SC postpones consideration of appeal in case of "honour killing"

The Supreme Court (SC) of Dagestan has postponed for two weeks the consideration of the appeal filed by the mother of the young woman, who was killed in the Kizilyurt District of Dagestan in August 2010, against the decision of the District Court that acquitted the relative of the young woman's father accused of the murder.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that a 22-year-old Maryam Magomedova was killed in August 2010. The trial began in November 2012 and ended in acquittal. On April 12, Salimat Kadyrova, the advocate of the young woman's mother, appealed against the verdict. The consideration of the appeal was scheduled for July 9; however, it was postponed because of the illness of the defendant.

The judgment states that prosecutors failed to present sufficient objective evidence to prove the defendant's guilt. The case contains discrepancies that were not eliminated during the preliminary investigation and remained irreparable, since the investigating authorities had lost the material evidence the clothes taken off the killed young woman.

The defendant told his relatives that he "washed away a spot" from the reputation of the family; however, during the investigation and during the trial, he denied his involvement in the murder. This was reported by Salimat Kadyrova.

Akif Beibutov, the defendant's advocate, believes that his client had no motive to commit the murder.

The "Caucasian Knot" has also reported on "honour killings" committed in the neighbouring republics. So, in November 2011, in the case of the murder of a 19-year-old young woman in Karachay-Cherkessia, her older brothers were found guilty, and they were sentenced to 13 and 9 years of imprisonment in a high-security penal colony. According to the investigators' version, the brothers killed his sister because they treated her lifestyle as immoral.