Knife and deception: a 33-year-old double murder in Perm has been solved
Investigators of the Investigative Committee of the Perm Region detained a suspect in a double murder committed in 1993. According to a law enforcement source, the man committed a crime for the sake of money and involved his relatives in the complicity. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
Murder in the taiga
TFR officers detained Elmar D., a 56-year-old native of Azerbaijan, who received Russian citizenship several years ago, in the south of Russia. The man was wanted for the murder of two of his former compatriots. According to investigators, in 1993, the three of them came from Transcaucasia to the Perm Region to buy high-quality wood and building materials for their company. The partners had 20 million rubles in cash with them (1 kg of beef cost about 2 thousand rubles in mid-1993).
According to the investigation, D. decided to appropriate funds for the purchase of goods, and kill his comrades. To realize his plan, he enlisted the support of his relatives, who were already permanently residing in Russia. Details of the massacre and details about the distribution of roles in the double murder in the interests of the investigation were not disclosed. It is known that the victims died from stab wounds.
To and from abroad
The crime could not be solved in hot pursuit. However, the investigation did not stop trying to get to the truth. We managed to identify the suspect in the murder and put him on the wanted list, but the traces were lost in Azerbaijan.
Presumably, the suspect invested the proceeds of crime in his business and was for some time a successful entrepreneur in his homeland. Later, he managed to move to Russia without attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies. According to one version, which will be checked by investigators, he forged documents upon entry into the country. A few years later, he managed to naturalize, he settled in one of the regions of Southern Russia, where he was engaged in business. According to Izvestia, his son is also successfully engaged in business in Russia.
The investigative authorities are continuing to verify the data obtained and clarify the involvement of the identified person in the crime; prosecution or a measure of restraint is currently being reported as a possibility.
Will there be a deadline
When a murder suspect is found after 20-30 years, the question of the statute of limitations arises. The provisions of Article 78 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in relation to crimes classified under paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code ("Murder of two or more persons committed by a group") do not prevent criminal prosecution, lawyer Ekaterina Krasnova believes.
— This category refers to particularly heavy trains. For such crimes, the law either significantly increases the statute of limitations or allows for the non-use of the statute of limitations in court decisions. Thus, regardless of whether 20, 30 or 40 years have passed, criminal prosecution remains legitimate.
In practice, the expiration of the statute of limitations limits only the possibility of imposing the maximum penalty (for example, life imprisonment), but does not exclude prosecution as such. In the Russian Federation, the accused have been repeatedly involved in cases of banditry, contract killings in the 1990s and episodes of organized crime groups 20-30 years after the commission of criminal acts.
— The legislator's rationale is that the public danger of murder does not decrease over time, — says Ekaterina Krasnova. — The State retains the right to identify the culprit and apply liability measures regardless of the prescription of the event.
Krasnova also recalled the category of cases to which the statute of limitations does not apply due to the criminal procedure legislation.
— We are talking about terrorist, war crimes, hostage-taking, as well as crimes against the peace and security of mankind (sabotage, genocide, ecocide, the use of prohibited means of warfare).
How to prove the old
In relation to the murder of two people in the Perm Region, criminal liability and long prison terms threaten not only Elmar D. (if his guilt is proven in court), but also his possible accomplices.
— The difficulties of the investigation after 33 years are not related to the statute of limitations, but to the evidence base. The charges are usually based on witness testimony," says Krasnova. — Courts normally treat the testimony of the accused in conjunction with the verification of testimony on the spot. The confirmation of the details is an important aspect of the prosecution, with their help a sufficient evidence base is formed.
According to a law enforcement source, investigative and operational units are now actively using modern forensic tools, genetic research, up-to-date databases and artificial intelligence to solve crimes of the past.
— The systems help to analyze images from old file cabinets and identify criminals who are hiding from justice with their help. Sometimes it happens that a criminal managed to escape abroad in the 1990s, made "clean" documents there, returned to Russia and re-naturalized here. Today, this does not work — intelligent systems are able to recognize a person even decades later by face and other anthropometric features.
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