PERM, November 26, 11:34 /ITAR-TASS/. The Perm Krai Court has turned down appeals of convicts in the criminal case over a fire at the Lame Horse nightclub in which 156 died on December 5, 2009.
However, the panel of judges has excluded the aggravating circumstances, including the crime commission by a group by previous concert and playing a particularly active role in the crime from the charges brought against all the convicts, except the factual owner of the club, Anatoly Zak, and the club’s executive director Svetlana Yefremova. The court has upheld the sentences for all the convicts.
The defence lawyers of the convicts in the case of the nightclub fire had filed preliminary appeals in May 2013, when the trial ended. The Leninsky district court of Perm completed the announcement of the sentence in the Lame Horse fire case on May 7. Among the convicts there are the club’s factual owner Anatoy Zak, who was sentenced to 9 years and 10 months in a general regime penal colony, as well as executive director Svetlana Yefremova and art director Oleg Fetkulov, who were found guilty of “the provision by an organised group of services that fail to meet the life and health safety requirements, resulting in the severe injuries and loss of life by negligence,” under the RF Criminal Code.
The father and son Igor and Sergei Derbenyovs, who organised the fatal fireworks show, have been convicted for the violation of the rules of the use of pyrotechnic devices, which entailed severe injuries and loss of life through negligence.
Inspectors of the Perm Krai department of the RF State Fire Safety Inspection Service Dmitry Roslyakov and Natalya Prokopyeva have been found guilty of negligence. The court found former chief fire safety inspector for the Perm Krai Vladimir Mukhutdinov guilty of power abuse, but released him from punishment because the statute of limitation has expired.
The rest seven defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four years to nine years and 10 months. The court also ruled that the moral and material damage caused by the Perm fire safety inspectors, Dmitry Roslyakov and Natalya Prokpyieva, is to be compensated by the RF Finance Ministry, as the damage on the victims was inflicted by officials.
In spring 2012, co-owner of the Lame Horse nightclub Konstantin Mrykhin, extradited to Russia from Spain, was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison.
The fire in the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm occurred on December 5, 2009 after midnight. The tragedy claimed the lives of 156 people and 404 more people were recognised the injured parties. The use of pyrotechnic devices in the premises where, as it has been found, fire safety rules and construction norms were not complied with, caused the fire at the nightclub’s jubilee party.