In Elektrostal, near Moscow, the funeral of 18-year-old Ilya Polezhaev, who died in a street fight with 19-year-old Tajik citizen Imomali Turdiev, was held under heavy police and Russian National Guard surveillance. The Elektrostal City Court that same day remanded Turdiev to two months' pretrial detention on murder charges. He will be held until March 18th, and faces up to 15 years in prison.
42-year-old Chechen native Magomed Alkhanov was added to the list of "extremists and terrorists" by Rosfinmonitoring. In 2024, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of attacking Pskov paratroopers in 2000 near the village of Ulus-Kert in the Vedensky District. It was reported that 84 soldiers were killed in the attack. The Memorial Human Rights Center stated that the criminal case against Alkhanov was fabricated.
The evidence in the investigation included testimonies of secret witnesses previously convicted of this attack. The Memorial Human Rights Center believes that Alkhanov was accused without grounds, noting that the cases of these events are "put on stream" and are being investigated by one investigative team. Of the six secret witnesses, one said he did not see the defendant at the scene. Another witness, a Russian sniper, allegedly identified Alkhanov 20 years later. The defense claimed that Basayev never took teenagers into battle, and the defendant was 17 years old at the time of the attack.
Earlier, in 2004, Magomed Alkhanov was sentenced to 10 years in prison for participating in an illegal armed group, which he served in full. However, in mid-2021, the man was detained again. He escaped from a psychiatric hospital in the Astrakhan region on October 26 and was detained on November 2, 2021.