Native of Tajikistan Mahmadali Ahmadov has been sentenced to life in prison for murder of Russian police officer and his family members in the Russian oblast of Samara.
Rossiyaskaya Gazeta reports a court on February 22 found Mahmadali Ahmadov, Roman Fataliyev, Islam Babayev and Orkhan Zokhrabov (those three are natives of Azerbaijan) guilty of killing a deputy chief of the Samara Oblast police and five his relatives in Syzran in April 2016.
Mahmadali Ahmadov and Roman Fataliyev were sentenced to life in prison, while Islam Babayev and Orkhan Zokhrabov were sentenced to 25 and 26 years in prison respectively.
The defendants reportedly confessed to the crime.
The trial began in December 2016 and it had been carried out behind closed doors
Recall, a deputy chief of the Samara oblast police in southern Russia was found murdered alongside with five of his relatives in their village house in the Ivashovka village in Samara oblast on April 24, 2016. The Incident reportedly took place early on April 23, 2016. Forty-nine year-old Andrei Gosht and five members of his family were reportedly beaten to death.
According to the local media, the victims were beaten to deaths by clubs. The killed family members were identified as Gosht’s parents, his brother, the brother’s wife and their daughter.
The only survivor of the attack is a 7-year-old girl. She was taken to hospital with injuries to her head and other parts of the body. Surviving 7-year-old Sofia reportedly sustained a traumatic brain injury and underwent surgery.
The Ahmadov family has lived in Russia’s Samara oblast for almost twenty years. They moved to Russia when Mahmadali Ahmadov was only three years old. They live in the village of Kushnikov, which is located 40 kilometers far from Ivashovka, where the murder occurred. Mahmadali is married with one small son.
Mahmadali and his wife decided to open a small café. They took a loan and began to draw up documents for private entrepreneurship. Mahmadali was solving the issue of land.
On that unlucky night, Mahmadali was reportedly at home. The next day, he came home and said that certain people had come and pressurized him to leave Russia in two hours.
“Mahmadali returned to Russia from Tajikistan voluntarily in order to prove his innocence after he learned from media reports that he was suspected in the murder,” his relatives said.
Tajikistan's Interior Ministry said on May 5, 2016 that Mahmadali Ahmadov voluntarily presented himself to police in Dushanbe on May 4 after he learned from media reports that he was suspected in the murder.
Ahmadov said the allegations were not true, and traveled to Moscow voluntarily.
Russia's Interior Ministry said an ethnic Tajik named Mahmadali Ahmadov, who is suspected of involvement in murder of a high-ranking police officer and five of his relatives, was detained at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport on May 4 upon his arrival there from Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Meanwhile Life news website reported in May 2016 that true murderers are still at large. According to Life, the gang of the Nushtayev brothers from Uzbekistan’s Ferghana oblast could be involved in the murder. Members of this gang are nationals of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Life noted that it could not be ruled out that the true murderers had already left Russia, crossing the Russian-Kazakh border in the Orenburg oblast.
There were rumors that Andrei Gosht had imposed “contribution” on local criminals and merchants and 2 million U.S. dollars could be hidden in his house.
