KIEV, August 23 (Itar-Tass) —— The appellate court of the Odessa Region has made a decision to recognize as legal the Prosecutor-General’s Office decision to extradite to Russia a second suspect in an assassination plot against Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Ukrainian television channel said.
Thereby the appellate court upheld the previous decision by Odessa’s Malinovsky Court, which found legal the Prosecutor-General’s Office decision to extradite the man, Ilya Pyanzin, to Russia.
At the same time the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office has decided to refrain from the extradition of another suspect in plotting the terrorist attack against Russian president, Adam Osmayev, until the European Court for Human Rights confirmed the legality of such a step. “We shall wait for the European Court’s decision. Then the Prosecutor-General’s office will make up its mind,” Prosecutor-General Viktor Pshonka told the media.
The decision to extradite Osmayev to Russia was made on August 14. The appellate court of the Odessa Region made the respective decision, thereby dismissing the suspect’s protest. However, at the recommendation of the European Court for Human Rights Ukraine suspended the extradition process. Prosecutor-General’s Office Secretary Margarita Velkova said “Osmayev’s defense lawyers have filed a protest with the European Court against the Odessa Region Appellate Court’s decision in favor of extraditing the suspect to Russia.” In that connection the European court asked Ukraine to present documents related to that case and also advised suspending the extradition process for the time it would need to consider them.
Earlier, the mission of the UN High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees in Kiev said that Osmayev had asked for political asylum in Ukraine. However, Osmayev’s common law wife Amina Okuyeva, then said that Ukraine’s migration service had refused to consider the petition. Then Osmayev, as follows from Okuyeva said, addressed Georgia with a similar request. “If Georgia denies political asylum, a similar request may be handed over to the Finnish authorities,” Okuyeva said.
According to Ukrainian and Russian law enforcers, Adam Osmayev, had created a cell of Imarat Kavkaz in Odessa and became its leader. Pyanzin and Chechnya-born Ruslan Madayev were the cell’s other members. In January 2012 there was an explosion in the apartment they were renting. One man – Ruslan Madayev, died, and Pyanzin, a citizen of Kazakhstan, suffered burns and was taken to an intensive care ward. He testified they had been plotting terrorist attacks in Russia. Osmayev managed to escape, although he had suffered injuries. He was detained on February 4. Russia in May asked the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office to extradite the habitual criminals wanted in Russia for a number of other offences.