2 Convicted in Killing of U.S. Embassy Butler
A Russian military court Friday convicted two soldiers of killing a butler employed by the U.S. Embassy and a Moscow lawyer, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
The butler, an Italian national named Clemente Pandin, and lawyer Yevgeny Lebedev were found strangled with leather belts in Lebedev’s Moscow apartment on May 2 last year.
Tass said the soldiers, Rafael Yunusov and Vladislav Salamatov, were sentenced to 15 years in a high-security prison camp. The prosecution had requested the death penalty.
The two men denied involvement in the crime and asserted that they were framed by the KGB security police.
But Tass said their guilt was proved by medical examination and psychological tests. It gave no motive for the killings.
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