MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. An Iraqi Criminal Court sentenced a militant involved in the assassination of a Russian diplomat in 2006 to the death penalty, al-Sumariyah TV channel informed on Monday.
"The Central Criminal Court has imposed capital punishment on one of the terrorists charged with the murder of a Russian diplomat in Iraq in 2006," Supreme Judicial Council spokesperson Abdul Sattar al-Biraqdar stated. According to him, the suspect confessed to murdering four foreigners as part of an armed group, among them a Russian diplomat.
The court representative did not provide any other information concerning the incident and did not mention the name of the murdered Russian diplomat.
On June 3, 2006, a group of militants blocked and attacked a Russian Embassy vehicle carrying five people in Baghdad’s Al Mansour district, near the Russian Embassy building. Vitaly Titov, a security guard, was killed as a result of the attack. Four Russians - Third Secretary Fyodor Zaytsev and embassy employees Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev - were sent to an unknown location and then killed.
A militant group with ties to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network (outlawed in Russia) claimed responsibility for the attack.