An appellate court in Sweden has toughened the sentence of a man convicted in the case of an attempt on the life of Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, increasing his sentence from ten to 12 years in prison. This is reported in a release from the Lower Norrland Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal found no mitigating circumstances in the case. At the same time, on the contrary, there were aggravating factors, the report says.
At the same time, the court reduced the sentence for another person involved in the case – a woman who is accused of letting the attacker into the blogger's house. The appellate instance considered that the evidence presented by the prosecution was insufficient to confirm the intentions of the murder. The woman's sentence was reduced from eight years to one year and six months in prison. The court does not name the persons involved in the case.
In addition, the court reduced the amount of compensation awarded to the victim from 140 thousand to 127 thousand Swedish kronor.
The attack on Abdurakhmanov was initially reported by the “Caucasian Knot” publication with reference to his brother. It was noted that on February 26, 2020, the blogger was hospitalized after being attacked by a man who entered his apartment in Sweden. In a fight with the attacker, Abdurakhmanov managed to disarm him and call the police, the blogger survived.
In March last year, Swedish authorities reported the arrest of a 29-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman on suspicion of assaulting Abdurakhmanov. Then it was said that the man who had entered the apartment attacked the blogger with a hammer, but he managed to disarm the criminal.
In January, Reuters reported that a court in Sweden had sentenced a Russian citizen to prison who had been found guilty of attempting to assassinate Abdurakhmanov. Then the direct perpetrator of the assassination attempt received ten years in prison. The woman who opened the door to the criminal and, as the court established, was an accomplice in the assassination attempt, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
The names of the suspects were not disclosed. Earlier, the publication Kavkaz.Realii (the Russian Ministry of Justice included it in the list of foreign media agents) reported that Ruslan Mamaev was the direct executor of the attack. Abdurakhmanov himself stated that during the trial Mamaev admitted that he had been promised € 50,000 for the murder.
The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin regrets the attack on the blogger, who is a citizen of Russia. However, he did not see the connection between the attack in Sweden and Abdurakhmanov's criticism of the head of Chechnya.
Abdurakhmanov is known for his critical remarks about the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. The blogger left Russia several years ago. In an interview with Radio Liberty (included in the list of foreign media agents) in July last year, he declared that he was in favor of the independence of Chechnya and called himself an enemy of Kadyrov. According to him, the head of the Chechen parliament, Magomed Daudov, announced a blood feud against him.
In turn, the press secretary of the head of Chechnya, Alvi Karimov, in March 2019 denied information about the blood feud and suggested that, when translating from Chechen, someone had distorted the essence of Daudov's speech.
