ST. PETERSBURG. Feb 17 (Interfax) - A co-organizer of an armed robbery ring that attacked a bus and truck in 1997 has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Mikhail Gordeyev, whose charges included banditry, murder and illegal possession of a firearm and who was convicted by the Leningrad Regional Court, is to serve his term in a high-security prison, Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement on Monday.
Gordeyev and two friends of his set up the armed group in autumn 1997.
In November that year the group, which was headed by the three men, overran a bus that was on a journey from Tikhvin to Moscow, robbed the passengers of money and valuables worth a total of more than 126,000 rubles and escaped.
The following month, the group attacked a truck that was carrying fish from Murmansk, Russia, to Brest, Belarus. Gordeyev, who was wearing a police uniform, stopped the vehicle, shot dead one of the drivers and tried to kill the other but the latter was able to escape in the truck.
From 1998 to 2007, Gordeyev, having been put on an international wanted list, was hiding in France, from where he proceeded to Canada. He was arrested in that country in 2013 and deported to Russia.
Earlier on, other members of the ring had been sentenced to long prison terms.