Moscow - Moscow's Lefortovsky Court has extended the detention of Ilya Pyanzin, a man suspected of plotting an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin, until March 25, 2013, court press secretary Yulia Skotnikova told Interfax on Thursday.
It was reported earlier that Adam Osmayev was detained in Odessa on Feb. 4, 2012 on suspicion of committing a bomb attack on Tyraspolska Street earlier the same day. The blast killed 26-year-old Russian citizen Ruslan Madayev and seriously injured Pyanzin, a 28-year-old citizen of Kazakhstan.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office later forwarded a criminal case opened by the police on charges of “careless handling of weapons, ammunition, or explosives” to the Ukrainian Security Service department for the Odessa region. It turned out that investigators had found elements of improvised explosive devices at the fire scene. Pyanzin was also detained and started actively cooperating with the investigation.
The Ukrainian Security Service confirmed on Feb. 27 that Osmayev and Pyanzin had plotted to murder Putin after the presidential elections in Russia scheduled for March 2012 and that Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services had thwarted the alleged plan.
Russia asked Ukraine in summer 2012 to hand over Osmayev and Pyanzin, but the men’s defense lawyers contested the prosecutor’s decision on their extradition. Despite the fact that the courts upheld the extradition to Russia, the delay enabled Osmayev’s lawyers to file a claim contesting his extradition with the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyers for Pyanzin prepared to file a similar claim but did failed to make it before Pyanzin was extradited to Russia in late August 2012. In Russia, he recanted the evidence he had given in Ukraine.
