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Moscow court to consider legality of sentences over Manezh disordrs

The convicts will have video conference contact with the court meeting

MOSCOW, March 29 (Itar-Tass) —— The Moscow city court on Thursday will consider the legality of the sentences for five people convicted of the participation in the mass disorders at Moscow's Manezh Square on December 11, 2010.

The court earlier postponed its meeting, as its panel needed additional time to study all the materials of the case.

The convicts will have video conference contact with the court meeting.

Their attorneys ask to revoke the sentences imposed by Moscow's Tverskoy court and return the case for new consideration.

The disorders took place in central Moscow on December 11, 2010, after the murder of Yegor Svirodov, a Spartak fan. He was killed in a brawl with North Caucasians a few days earlier.

Up to 5,000 football fans and activists of informal nationalist associations gathered there to express their outrage that five of the six suspects detained for the murder were at first released, with their written undertaking not to leave.

The unsanctioned meeting developed into clashes with law-enforcement forces. Disorders also took place at the metro stations Kitai-Gorod, Tretyakovskaya, Tverskaya, Filyovsky Park and others.

On October 28, 2011, Moscow's Tverskoy court sentenced five people detained for the participation in the disorders to two to five and a half years in prison. They were found guilty of "calls for mass disorders" and "use of force against representatives of authorities."

A Belarussian citizen, an activist of the unregistered party Other Russia, Igor Berezyuk, is sentenced to five and a half years. Another activist from the same party, Ruslan Khubayev, is sentenced to four years in a high-security prison, and his fellow political activist Kirill Unchuk has a three-year sentence (with his previous suspended sentence taken into account).