MOSCOW, June 09. /ITAR-TASS/. The Moscow city court on Monday has sentenced Rustam Makhmudov and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, both of Chechen descent, to life imprisonment. The jury court ruled that both were responsible for a murder plot against Anna Politkovskaya and her assassination. Three other members of a criminal gang involved in Politkovskaya's murder have been sentenced to prison terms from 12 to 20 years.
On May 20, the jury court by a majority vote passed a verdict of guilty to all the defendants in the trial and said that none of them deserves leniency.
Proceeding from the jury verdict, the judge, Pavel Melekhin, has sentenced two defendants to a maximum punishment; one of the three accomplices who collaborated with the assassins, former policeman Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, has been sentenced to 20 years in a penal colony; Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov, the killer's two brothers who had been spying on Politkovskaya, have been sentenced to 12 and 14 years behind bars, respectively.
Former policeman Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who had organized shadowing after Politkovskaya, was sentenced to eleven years in prison after he had confessed to the crime and gave testimony against the other defendants.
Anna Politkovskaya — a prominent journalist, who was an observer of Novaya Gazeta, was shot dead in the stairway of her house in Lesnaya Street in Moscow on October 7, 2006. The main version of the crime against PoIitkovskaya studied by the investigation was her professional activity.
Politkovskaya's children have claimed five million rubles in moral damages from each of the convicts.