The military court of the self-proclaimed LPR sentenced Lieutenant Colonel Irek Magasumov to 11 years in a maximum security colony for the murder of an 18-year-old girl (Article 105 of the Criminal Code). His lawyer Konstantin Elfimov told Tatar-inform about this.
The military man was also found guilty of hooliganism (Article 213 of the Criminal Code). Last summer he was awarded the star of Hero of Russia, which was deprived by a court decision. “They left their military rank and the Order of Courage,” the lawyer told Tatar-inform.
According to investigators, in August last year Magasumov killed a girl whom he and his colleague Pavel Yaskevich met in a Luhansk bar. She asked the military to show them the pistols the men were armed with.
According to Magasumov’s defense, Yaskevich accidentally shot the Luhansk woman when he was putting the pistol in his holster. The lieutenant colonel allegedly left the bar a few minutes before the shot, because a colleague “who had gotten to the bottom of five guys with tattoos got to him and asked for help.”
Later, Yaskevich wrote a confession, but the investigation, according to lawyer Elfimov, did not take his testimony into account. In addition, the friend of the murdered woman insisted that it was Magasumov who shot the girl. The colonel allegedly did not like the behavior of the Luhansk woman.
Business Online noted that during the investigation Magasumov was confused in his testimony. At first he said that he learned about the murder in the morning from his colleague, and a few days later he told a different version: Yaskevich called him that same night and admitted that he “did something weird with the gun.” Witnesses who were near the cafe at that moment say that at first they heard two shots, and after a while another one.
As Magasumov’s lawyer told Tatar-inform, at the last word his client asked the judge not to deprive him of his military rank, “because in any case, in any court decision, he intends to defend his Motherland and believes that he will be more useful on the front line.”
The command of the military unit where the colonel served insisted on his conditional release “in connection with military service during a special period.” During the investigation, Governor of the Kemerovo Region Sergei Tsivilev and State Duma deputy from United Russia Alexander Khinshtein stood up for Magasumov during the investigation.