Six jurors of the Novocherkassk Garrison Military Court found 41-year-old contract soldier from Chechnya and participant in the war in Ukraine Zaindi Takaev not guilty in the case of the murder of 20-year-old colleague Magomed Shakhbanov, Kommersant reports.
On January 17, Judge Artem Kaplunov, based on the jury’s verdict, acquitted Takaev (Part 1 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code). The sergeant was released from custody and his right to rehabilitation was recognized. As the newspaper notes, Takaev spent a year and a half in a pre-trial detention center and will now be able to demand compensation from the security forces.
Representatives of Shakhbanov and the prosecutor's office of the Southern Military District did not agree with the court's decision and filed an appeal. In their opinion, there were procedural violations in the court, and the jury could have been pressured.
According to the case materials described by Kommersant, on June 6, 2022, servicemen of the 163rd Tank Regiment and two local girls were resting in the courtyard of a high-rise building in Pervomaisk in the self-proclaimed LPR. In the gazebo, they grilled barbecue and drank beer, and when the food and drinks ran out, they began to disperse.
According to the investigation, when only 20-year-old Anastasia, Sofia and private Magomed Shabanov remained at the table, Takaev fired a pistol in the head of a colleague. The girls said that at the time of the shooting they hid under the table.
Takaev explained that he walked away from the gazebo, and then heard that they were shooting at it from the neighboring bushes. According to the sergeant, he ran into the gazebo, grabbed a machine gun standing by the bench and opened fire towards the bushes. He did not see the attackers at dusk. After this, Takaev called the police and called two of his neighbor doctors to the scene.
Kommersant writes that the jury’s decision was probably influenced by inconsistencies in the case materials.
Servicemen Vagif Mirzoev and Magomed Dibirov, who participated in the feast, said that Takaev and Shabanov had no reason for enmity. The defendant claimed that he did not hold the Makarov pistol in his hands, which, according to investigators, was used to kill Shakhbanov. The owner of the pistol, Mirzoev, said that he did not part with the weapon.
One of the lawyers, in a conversation with Kommersant, noted that the witnesses in the case “did not hide the fact that they did not see the shooter.” The examination could not accurately determine the DNA of the person holding the weapon, but revealed that Shakhbanov was shot at “at close range” with a bullet of a caliber that does not match the pistol. However, the bullet that killed the contract soldier was never found.