Defence satisfied with jury's verdict in BORN's case

The Moscow Regional Court has scheduled for April 8 the consideration of the verdict announced by the jury in the case against the "Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists" (known as BORN). Advocates of the defendants have said that they were generally satisfied with the verdict.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Maxim Baklagin, Vyacheslav Isaev, Mikhail Volkov and Yuri Tikhomirov were charged with involvement in the murders of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova, the Judge Eduard Chuvashov, antifascists Fyodor Filatov, Ivan Khutorskoy and Ilya Djaparidze, as well as of Rasul Khalilov, a figurant in the "Black Hawks" case, the athlete Muslim Abdullaev and the taxi driver Sosa Khachikyan.

The jurors announced their verdict in the case in the late evening of March 31, after two days of discussion of the list of 69 questions about the facts of evidence of the crimes, defendants' guilt, and mercy for them. As a result, the jury has announced a verdict of guilty and recognized the fact that the defendants committed the crimes as members of the BORN and not as independent persons and that the crimes were committed out of ideological motives. According to the jurors, the defendants deserve leniency for a number of episodes.

The defendants' advocates were satisfied with the verdict announced.

So, without going into details, Marat Stepanov, who represented the interests of Vyacheslav Isaev, said that he treated "the verdict as satisfactory in general."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.