Qatar imprisons Russian agents convicted of assassination
DOHA, Qatar -- In a verdict with implications for the war on terror, a court convicted two Russian intelligence officers of assassinating a Chechen rebel leader and ordered both to serve 25 years in prison for a car bombing the judge said Russia's government approved.
The decision was regarded by some as a major embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin, whose government has waged a fierce crackdown on rebels in the breakaway Chechen republic.
Judge Ibrahim al-Nasr said the plot to assassinate Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a rebel leader and former Chechen president, was carried out in Qatar with the backing of "Russian leadership" and coordinated between Moscow and the Russian Embassy here.
"It is a pretty serious slap in the face for Russia and, first of all, its president," Russian lawmaker Viktor Ilyukhin, deputy head of the lower house's security committee, said of the verdict. "To put it bluntly, we've screwed up."
Yandarbiyev, who had been linked to terrorism by Russia, the United States, and the United Nations, was killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded as he left a Doha mosque on Feb. 13. His teenage son was injured.
The Russian agents, who have not been officially identified, were arrested soon after. Russia has denied involvement in Yandarbiyev's killing and has said the defendants were gathering intelligence.
"Moscow, as before, considers the two Russian citizens detained in Qatar as not involved in the attack on Yandarbiyev," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Lavrov said the two will appeal.
Their Russian lawyers said the appeal would argue that the agents' arrest violated diplomatic immunity; that their confessions were obtained through torture; and that Qatar's Supreme Criminal Court did not investigate the torture reports and failed to address the lack of credible evidence.
Lawyer Mohsen al-Suweidy, head of the Qatar-based defense team, said he had expected the Russians would be acquitted.
The trial began in April and concluded with the court ordering life sentences for both men. In Qatar, time in jail is set at a maximum of 25 years for those sentenced to life.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty in the case, which threatened to strain relations between Russia and Qatar, an oil-rich Persian Gulf state closely allied to the United States.
The verdict demonstrated that government agents working overseas in the war on terrorism will not necessarily be granted immunity for acts aimed at reining in people or groups their countries view as terrorists.
Sergei Markov of the Institute of Political Research in Moscow said Washington should join Moscow in pressing for amnesty for the agents, because "Russia and the United States are in the same antiterrorism coalition."
