22:34, 20 November 2006

Journalist of the "Caucasus-Centre" Chechnya separatists' web-site sentenced to 5 years of custody

The Butyrskiy District Court of Moscow has recognized guilty and sentenced Boris Stomakhin, editor-in-chief of the bulletin "Radical Policy" and journalist of the "Caucasus-Centre" web-site, to five years of imprisonment at a general custody treatment for excitation of religious hatred accomplished publicly with use of mass media, the "Interfax" reports.

The "Caucasian Knot" informed earlier that the criminal case against Stomakhin was initiated in December 2003, and the accusation was presented in April 2004. After Ms. S. Kolobova, investigator of the prosecutor's office, rejected Stomakhin's petition to attract an expert of the Independent Psychiatric Association to his psychiatric examination appointed by her, B. Stomakhin left for Ukraine and applied for political asylum there, of which he was refused. Last year, as his friends told, he returned to Moscow, where he was arrested. At detention, he tried to get down by a rope from the balcony of his apartment in the third floor, but the rope broke, he fell down and got a double fracture of his spinal column and a leg fracture.