MOSCOW. July 28 (Interfax) - On Thursday, the Moscow City Court sentenced Ruslan Ozniyev, an associate of Caucasus insurgency leader Doku Umarov, to 17 years of imprisonment, having found him guilty of plotting explosions at police buildings in Moscow in 2009.
The court found the defendant guilty of participating in illegal paramilitary formations, trafficking in arms and explosives, preparing terror attacks and using forged documents.
The defense has ten days to appeal the verdict.
The defendant has said he will appeal by all means.
"Of course I will appeal. We have no normal courts. Our judges do as they are told," Ozniyev said.
He denied being a terrorist.
"I am a normal man. I am not a terrorist. I committed other crimes: illegal storage [of explosives]," Ozniyev told reporters.
The hearing took place behind closed doors because some of the case files contain classified documents.
"We are satisfied with the verdict," the prosecutor said.
Earlier, the prosecution demanded 18 years in prison for Ozniyev.
The prosecution presented evidence proving that he was an active member of an illegal paramilitary formation and that together with Hussein Khatsiyev, leader of the Imarat Kavkaz paramilitary group, he had been preparing terror attacks in Moscow on Umarov's orders.
The attacks were aimed at changing Russia's constitutional order and violating the country's territorial integrity by pulling the North Caucasus republics out of the Russian Federation, the prosecution said.
Ozniyev, who formally resides in Le Mans, France, used the Internet to choose potential attack targets, namely apartment houses, offices of military commissioners and police offices in Moscow.
On October 19, 2009, Ozniyev, using a forged Ukrainian passport, arrived in Moscow where an envoy handed him a Makarov pistol, ammunition, more than 15 kg of explosives (plastic explosives and trotyl), 20 detonators and a remote control radio device. He bought other items needed to make a bomb at one of the Moscow markets.
Ozniyev failed to translate his criminal plan into action because the same day he was arrested by Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.
The FSB Investigative Department brought criminal charges against Ozniyev under Article 208 (participation in illegal paramilitary formations), Article 222 (illicit trafficking in arms and explosives) and Article 205 (preparing a terrorist attack) of the Russian Criminal Code.