MOSCOW COURT TO BEGIN TRIAL OF BOMBERS OF MARKET
ITAR-TASS
Dec 11 2007
Russia
MOSCOW, December 11 (Itar-Tass) – A criminal case on the blast at
Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market has come to the Moscow City Court, the
court’ s press service chief Anna Usachyova told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.
Lawyer Dimity Bakharev, who represents the interests of one of
defendants, said the "trial will be held with the participation of
a jury, about which all defendants had asked during the preliminary
investigation".
The blast at the market on August 21, 2006, killed 14 people, including
two children, and left 70 people injured.
Three university students were soon detained on suspicion of
involvement in the bomb attack.
The group is also thought to have on its record eight blasts in Moscow
in 2006 that went without causalities.
Investigators presume that the crimes were motivated by ethnic hate.
Eighth young people have been charged with involvement in the terrorist
acts, and of illegal possession of arms and explosives.
The prosecutors accuse them of staging, among eight blasts, a bomb
attack on the editorial office of the newspaper Russky Vestnik that
the defendants considered too soft-spoken about "persons of non-Slavic
ethnicity".
Some of the defendants have been accused of killing Armenian university
student Vagan Abramyants at Moscow’s underground station Pushkinskaya.
Most of the defendants were members of the unregistered group Spas
("Savior").
According to investigators, they had no political programme, but were
guided by ethnic bigotry.
The Moscow City Court is to set a date of a preliminary hearing.