Former security officer Sergei Klimuk, who is serving a life sentence for participating in a 2006 bombing of a Moscow market that killed 14 people, has appealed to the Russian Constitutional Court over alleged violation of his rights for sentence revision.
In 2008, a jury at the Moscow City Court found eight defendants guilty of bombing Moscow’s Cherkizovsky Market in August 2006. Four of them, including Klimuk, were sentenced to life in prison. According to the Russian Criminal Code, a jury decision is irreversible.
“The existing legislation is discriminatory because it allows the courts not to review sentences passed in line with jury verdicts,” Klimuk’s lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky said on Wednesday.
Klimuk, who was considered by the prosecution as the ideological leader of the nationalist group Spas, has never admitted his guilt and appealed in April with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg over improper treatment during the investigation, including torture.
The Strasbourg Court has not yet reviewed his appeal, which also includes a demand for one million euros in compensation for moral and other damages.