Tatar Supreme Court Upholds Acquittal Of Police Officers
June 19, 2009
KAZAN -- Tatarstan's Supreme Court has upheld the acquittal of two police officers accused of shooting and killing an unarmed civilian, RFE/RL's correspondent reports from the capital, Kazan.
Two plainclothes agents of Tatarstan's Interior Ministry -- Ruslan Taziev and Vladimir Alekseyev -- mistakenly entered a wrong apartment during an operation to arrest members of an organized criminal group in January 2007.
They shot the apartment's owner to death and wounded his father-in-law.
Kazan's Kirov District Court found both police officers not guilty.
The chief of Kazan's Center for Human Rights, Igor Sholokhov, told RFE/RL that he and his colleagues are going to appeal the decision by Tatarstan's Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.