The North Caucasus District Military Court has sentenced Ramzan Belyalov and Magomed Mazdayev, who took part in the 1995 Budyonnovsk hostage crisis, to 15 and 13 years in prison respectively.
"The court has found Ramzan Belyalov and Magomed Mazdayev guilty of severe crimes… particularly of taking hostages and participating in the Budyonnovsk terrorist attack in 1995," TASS cited the court’s judge as saying.
The defendants opposed the sentence and the judge said that appeals could be filed in accordance with the law.
According to the case file, Belyalov and Mazdayev were members of an illegal armed group led by Shamil Basayev and took part in the hostage taking in Budyonnovsk. They were charged with being involved in terrorist activities, carrying out attacks, kidnapping and illegally possessing weapons.
In June 1995, a group of 200 terrorists led by Basayev took more than 1,600 residents of Budyonnovsk hostage, bringing them all to a local hospital. As many as 129 people died in the hostage crisis, while 415 suffered wounds. Basayev, the attack’s mastermind, was killed during a special operation in Ingushetia in 2006.
