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Moscow Domodedovo Airport owner put under house arrest for 2 months — court

The judge’s ruling says Dmitry Kamenshchik will be under arrest in a vacation center
Domodedovo Airport owner Dmitry Kameshchik (center) Artyom Geodakyan/TASS
Domodedovo Airport owner Dmitry Kameshchik (center)
© Artyom Geodakyan/TASS

MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. Moscow’s Basmanny Court on Friday put under house arrest Domodedovo Airport owner Dmitry Kameshchik, accused of violating security requirements that entailed the death of people in a terrorist attack in 2011.

"The investigation’s request is granted and the measure for Kamenshchik is chosen in the form of house arrest until April 18," Judge Yelena Lenskaya announced, refusing to release the businessman on bail.

The judge’s ruling says Kamenshchik will be under arrest in a vacation center.

The defendant’s lawyer Mikhail Kolpakov told TASS the defense will appeal the ruling on Kamenshchik’s house arrest.

"We disagree with the measure of restraint chosen by the court today, and we will appeal the ruling in a Moscow City Court appeals instance," Kolpakov said.

Under house arrest, Kamenshchik is banned, without an investigator’s permission, from leaving the place of residence, communicating with any people except for those determined by the investigation, using telephone and other communications means, including the internet.

Earlier Friday, during hearing of the investigation’s request, Kamenshchik, accused of violations of security requirements in the airport, which entailed deaths of people, asked the court, if the measure of restraint was house arrest, to allow him to serve the term in a Moscow Region village, Odintsovo, in a two-story mansion.

He said that he was registered and resided in a private house in Odintsovo, but leased a two-story building nearby, which is nonresidential and has the status of a vacation center, and that he would like to be under house arrest there.

Prosecutors say defendants in Domodedovo airport case not guilty of people’s death

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said Friday the defendants in the case on violations in Domodedovo Airport are not guilty of people’s death.

The Prosecutor General’s Office sent a request to Russian Investigative Committee chairman Alexander Bastrykin demanding that the arrest of three ex-chiefs of the airport, who are accused in the case, be canceled, the office’s spokesman said at a hearing in Moscow’s Basmanny Court considering the measure of restraint for airport owner Dmitry Kamenshchik.

"The Basmanny Court, contrary to the position of the prosecutor, arrested other defendants in the case. The Prosecutor General’s Office asks to cancel the court’s ruling on their arrest," a representative of state prosecution said. "We filed a statement to Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin on illegal arraignment and are asking to cancel their measure of restraint in the form of arrest," he said.

Earlier, former head of the Russian office of the Airport Management Company Ltd Svetlana Trishina, managing director of Domodedovo Airport Aviation Security Andrey Danilov and airport compound director Vyacheslav Nekrasov were arrested on the criminal case.

They were charged with a crime envisioned by Part 3 of Article 238 of the Russian Criminal Code (Fulfilling work or rendering services out of line with security requirements, which entailed, out of negligence, the death of two or more persons). The maximum punishment on the article is 10 years in prison.

The prosecutor also spoke against detention and placing under home arrest Dmitry Kameshchik. He said the death of people was the result of a terrorist attack and was not linked to the actions of the accused, who made managerial decisions to render transport services to passengers that did not meet security requirements.

Investigators say improper provision of security for passengers in the airport made it possible in January 2011 for Magomed Yevloyev to enter, unhindered, the building of Domodedovo Airport’s air terminal with an explosive device hidden under his clothes and detonate it, which killed 37 people and left 172 wounded.