MOSCOW, October 20 (Itar-Tass) – A jury panel formed by Moscow City Court has passed a guilty verdict for all the six men involved in the murder of Spartak Moskva football club’s fan, Yegor Sviridov.
Sviridov was killed December 6, 2010, at a bus stop on Kronshtadsky Boulevard St. in northwest Moscow.
The jurors established that the main defendant, Aslan Cherkesov, was guilty of a premeditated murder and did not deserve clemency.
His guilt was established in connection with five clauses of Russia’s Criminal Code, including the one that specifies punishment for a ‘murder committed out of hooligan motivations’.
A total of eight jurors voted to recognizing Cherkesov’s guilt and four voted against it.
The other five persons featured in the criminal case have been found guilty of hooliganism based on conspiracy and of inflicting purported damage on a person’s health.
It took the jury panel about five hours to arrive at a decision. On two occasions, Judge Alexander Ryasnovsky told the jurors to retreat for correcting the mistakes they had made while drafting the verdict.
Aslan Cherkesov’s lawyer Dmitry Pankov said the jurors’ verdict “would be appealed by all means.”
The panel ruled that the December 6 incident had been caused by another incident that occurred December 4, 2010, in the same caf· called ‘The Beer-Dinking Spot’ /Pivnaya Tochka/ on Kronshtadsky Boulevard.
On that day Cherkesov, who was accompanied by an accomplice, made a shot from a Streamer’2014 gun to the floor after a brawl with a customer of the caf·. As a result the man who was not identified walked out of the place in a fear of reprisals.
Public prosecutors believe that the unpunished use of the weapon in a public place and the inciting of fear in other people with its aid bred Cherkesov’s desire to attack someone.
“After 22:30 December 5, Cherkesov again visited the caf· on Kronshtadsky Boulevard in the company of his friends Akayev, Arsibiyev, Ibragimov, Islamilov, and Utarbiyev,” the verdict says. He told them about the incident, after which they made a contract to attack some other people with the aid of Cherkesov’s gun and a number of other objects.
Upon seeing Yegor Sviridov and his friends at a bus stop, Cherkesov chose them as targets for the attack. He took part in smiting them, for the purpose of which he used a non-lethal gun and a glass bottle.
The jurors’ verdict says Cherkesov made no less than two shots at his victims, Filatov and Sviridov, shooting the latter man pointblank in the head and then in the stomach from a distance of less than a meter.
Cherkesov committed the assault in a manner that put himself into an opposition to the people around and explicitly demonstrated his arrogance towards them.
Yegor Sviridov’s murder had a resounding effect and led up to mass disorders on the downtown Manezhnaya Square five days later.