MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax) - Spain has extradited to Russia Sergei Butorin, the leader of the Orekhovo criminal group, one of the bloodiest criminal groups in the 1990s, an official with the Prosecutor General's Office announced.
Butorin was handed over to Russian authorities today and brought to a detention facility in Russia, Vadim Yalovitsky, deputy head of the extradition department of the Porosecutor General's Office said in Moscow.
Butorin will be tried on over 30 counts of murder, he said.
The Orekhovo criminal gang, led by Butorin and Dmitry Belkin from March 1996, became active in Moscow in 1994, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office Marina Gridneva said.
Also in the 1990s this criminal ring merged with the Medvedkovo criminal gang to form a single criminal organization, which has committed at least 50 murders and attempted murders in and outside Moscow, in the Vladimir region, and in Greece and Ukraine.
It was crushed in 1998-2000. Butorin and another member Polyansky fled to Spain, where they were arrested in a joint operation, carried out by Spanish criminal police, the Moscow Criminal Police Department and the Interpol bureau in Russia.
Other members were arrested in Moscow and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including life imprisonment.