2004 Russian Aircraft Bombings - Trials

Trials

On 24 August 2004, the bombers were stopped in the airport by the police captain Mikhail Artamonov to be searched for weapons and for identification. They were accompanied by two male Chechens, the four of them arrived to Moscow on a flight from Makhachkala. According to the prosecution, Artamonov let them go without doing the search, and subsequently was charged with criminal negligence. The prosecution asked the judge to give him six years of imprisonment. On 30 June 2005, he was convicted of negligence and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment. That sentence was appealed, and the court reduced the term of his imprisonment from seven to six years.

According to investigators, ticket seller Armen Aratyunyan was bribed approximately €140 (US$170) to sell tickets to the two women without getting proper IDs. Aratyunyan also helped Dzhebirkhanova to bribe the ticket-checking clerk, Nikolai Korenkov, with €25 (US$30) to get on board without a proper ID. On 15 April 2005, Aratyunyan and Korenkov were convicted of giving and taking the bribe, respectively. Because of serious consequences of the bribe, they were sentenced to 1.5 years in settlement colony each (settlement colony convicts have more rights and privileges than people in regular colony).

Twenty-one relatives of the deceased passengers filled a civil suit against the security company responsible for checking the passengers, ZAO East-Line Aviation Security. They demanded 3,000,000 rubles (approximately €86,600 or US$115,000) in damages per victim. The trial in that case started in Volgograd on 22 February 2007. The security company claimed that it was not liable for damages, but the persons who organized the bombings were. The court handling the civil case sent a request to the prosecutor's office to get an update on the criminal investigation. It turned out that the investigation was suspended indefinitely on 26 September 2006. According to the investigator who was handling the case, the people helping the suicide bombers at the airport were killed in Chechnya, the people responsible for planning the bombings were not identified (Shamil Basayev, who claimed responsibility for organizing the bombings, was killed as well), so the investigation was suspended due to lack of suspects. That civil case was still in court as of December 2009. Other passengers' relatives also sued the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, S7 Airlines and two insurance companies, Ingosstrakh and OAO Afes for damages (none of the defendants acknowledge any liability). On 21 October 2007, court in the latter case found S7 Airlines liable for damages and ruled they should pay the relative of the victim in question 250,000 rubles (approximately €7,000), which was about 10% of what the plaintiffs asked for. S7's initial appeal was rejected by the court on 27 May 2008. A new S7 appeal was successful in April 2009 and the verdict was thrown out. This time, relatives of the passenger appealed that decision, but their appeal was dismissed in August 2009. Then they planned to appeal to a higher court.