“Ordinary hooliganism?”

The Supreme Court today upheld the sentence passed on the killers of 9-year-old Khursheda Sultonova, a Tajik girl murdered in St. Petersburg.  The Court therefore rejected the cassation appeal by the Prosecutor’s office and the appeal by the parents of the murdered child.

On 22 March this year a jury reached a verdict finding seven out of the eight men accused guilty only of “hooliganism”. The jury members considered the guilt of one of the men who was charged with Khursheda’s murder unproven, and acquitted him on this charge.

The sentence was delivered on 30 March 2006.  Seven of the accused were sentenced by the court to periods of imprisonment from 1.5 to 5.5 years. Those still minors will serve their sentence in corrective penal colonies, and the others in ordinary regime colonies.

9-year-old Khursheda Sultonova was killed in St. Petersburg on 9 February 2004.  She was returning with her family, originally from Tajikistan, from skating. In the courtyard of their block of flats they were fallen upon by a group of young people armed with baseball bats, iron bars and knives. Khursheda’s  father, 35-year-old Yunus Sultonov, was beaten up.  Her 7-year-old cousin , Akibar, was punched several times, but managed to hide under a car parked in the courtyard. One of the assailants stabbed the nine-year-old girl 11 times. She died before an ambulance arrived.