The Southern District Military Court sentenced Stavropol resident Rustam Yarbuldyev in the case of an attack in 1999 on military personnel in Dagestan as part of the unit of field commander Shamil Basayev during the second Russian-Chechen war. The convicted man will spend 13 years in a maximum security penal colony.
Yarbuldyev was found guilty under Articles 209 (banditry), 279 (armed mutiny), 317 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (attempt on the life of a law enforcement officer).
According to investigators, the defendant, as part of an armed group led by Basayev, participated in an attack on Russian military personnel in the Botlikh District of Dagestan in August 1999.
On August 7, 1999, more than a thousand armed fighters from Chechnya entered Dagestan. The events that followed resulted in violent clashes that lasted for more than a month. Only on September 15, 1999, Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev announced the complete liberation of Dagestan.
