SC upholds Budaikhanova's conditional sentence

On January 17, the Russian Supreme Court (SC) refused to toughen the sentence to Victoria Budaikhanova, a native of Dagestan, sentenced to a conditional imprisonment after her return from Syria.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that according to the investigators, Victoria Budaikhanova had rendered medical help to wounded militants of the "Islamic State" (IS), a terrorist organization, banned in Russia by the court. The prosecutor asked eight years in prison for her; the defence insisted on conditional punishment. In September 2018, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced her to five years of conditional imprisonment.

The Prosecutor's Office (PO) then appealed against the verdict at the Russia's SC, demanding eight years of real imprisonment for Budaikhanova. On January 17, the Judicial Panel on Servicemen's Cases of the SC considered Victoria's case. "The Panel has denied the PO's appeal, leaving the previous judgement unchanged," the "Kommersant" quotes the SC's spokesperson saying on January 17.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 18, 2019 at 07:45 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.