Moscow City Court has found Hennadiy Afanasyev guilty and sentenced him to seven years of imprisonment in a criminal inquiry into a terror plot in Crimea, which also involves Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov.
“The court found Afanasyev guilty under Article 205 part two of the Russian Criminal Code (terror attack) and sentenced him to seven years at a high-security prison and one and a half year of restricted freedom,” Moscow City Court spokeswoman Ulyana Solopova told Interfax on Dec. 26.
Since some of the case files examined by the court are classified, the trial was partly held in private, she said. The verdict was read out on Dec. 17, Solopova said.
On May 30 the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the arrest in Crimea of several members of the Right Sector – Sentsov, Afanasyev, Oleksiy Chyrniho and Oleksandr Kolchenko on suspicion of plotting acts of sabotage and terror attacks in several cities on the peninsula. Later the charges against Afanasyev were heard in a separate trial. The other defendants are held in custody. On Thursday, the court extended the custody terms for Chyrniho and Kolchenko until next April.
According to the FSB, the suspects were plotting “as a terrorist entity to stage explosions in the early hours of May 9, 2014, by using improvised explosive devices near the Eternal Flame memorial and Lenin Monument in Simferopol and torching the offices of the Russian Community of Crimea and the office of the United Russia Party in Simferopol on April 14 and 18, 2014.”.
