During the debate in the Moscow City Court, 23 years in a strict regime colony was requested by the prosecutor for the thief in law Rashad Ismailov (Rashad Gyandzhinsky), accused of occupying the highest position in the criminal hierarchy and murder. According to investigators, the defendant became a thief after in 2009, together with an accomplice, on Izmailovsky Highway in Moscow, he shot two natives of Azerbaijan. Rashad Ismailov himself does not admit guilt, his defense insists on an acquittal.
The criminal case of Rashad Ismailov has been considered in the Moscow City Court since December 2021 by a single judge, since the defendant did not petition for a trial with the participation of a jury. Why he did this is not exactly known: perhaps he thought that the judge alone would deal with the case better, and in this case it is easier to challenge a guilty verdict than one based on a jury verdict.
In the debate, the prosecutor recalled that Mr. Ismailov is accused of occupying the highest position in the criminal hierarchy (part 1 of article 210.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the group murder of two persons, committed in a generally dangerous way (paragraph “a”, paragraph “e”, paragraph “g”, part 2 of article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and illegal circulation of weapons (part 2 of article 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As stated in the court, the murder of two men in a BMW X5 charged to the thief was committed on May 15, 2009. The criminals literally riddled the car of their victims, firing 29 bullets from a TT pistol and a Kalashnikov assault rifle into it.
According to the indictment, at that time Rashad Gyandzhinsky participated in the showdowns that were being waged over the fruit and vegetable market in Moscow. And his victims, natives of Azerbaijan Mammadali Huseynov and Gasham Verdiev, according to law enforcement officers, were part of the group of thief in law Rovshan Dzhaniev (Rovshan Lenkoransky), who was trying to take control of the supply of vegetables and fruits to the capital, which had previously been in the sphere of interests of an authoritative Azerbaijani businessman Bakhysh Aliyev (Vakha). Rashad Ismailov allegedly acted on the side of the latter.
It should be noted that another motive for the execution of Huseynov and Verdiev could be revenge for the murder in 2007 in Baku of businessman Raguf Rustamov, who was close to Vakha. According to Kommersant’s sources, the latter carried out wholesale deliveries of fruits and vegetables to the Moscow region.
According to the Main Investigative Directorate of the ICR, which conducted the case of Rashad Ismailov, the double murder contributed to the latter’s promotion up the criminal hierarchy.
In February 2013, as the prosecutor said in court, “a meeting of persons occupying the highest position in the criminal hierarchy assigned the accused the status of a thief in law.” This, according to the state prosecutor, gave Rashad Gyandzhinsky the opportunity to “control the distribution of funds received by the informal thieves’ treasury … subjugate representatives of the criminal environment with a lower status to their will, give them instructions and dispose of them.”
It should be noted that after the coronation, the name of Rashad Ismailov was not mentioned in connection with high-profile crimes. True, he was detained twice in Moscow restaurants, where the crime bosses held their gatherings, but in both cases they released him after checking his documents. But in the fall of 2018, Rashad Ismailov was detained in Minsk. During a search of the thief in law and his friends, Belarusian policemen found weapons and drugs, finding out along the way that the visitors had crossed the border with fake passports. For this, Rashad Ismailov was sentenced to ten years in prison. However, a year later he was released on parole, but only in order to be handed over to Russian law enforcement agencies, which initiated a criminal case against the thief in occupying the highest position in the criminal hierarchy. Later, during the investigation, an article of the Criminal Code about the murder appeared in the charge.
As a result, the prosecutor asked the court to recognize the thief in law guilty of all three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation imputed to him and to sentence him by partial addition of sentences to 23 years in a strict regime colony.
The lawyers, on the contrary, asked the court to acquit the defendant, insisting that his guilt was not proven. The defense referred to the fact that most of the participants in the events described in the criminal case had long died in criminal showdowns, and the prosecution, according to lawyers, was based not on direct, but on indirect evidence. Yes, and it was difficult for Rashad Ismailov to lead criminals in recent years, the defenders noted, since since November 2018 he was imprisoned in Belarus, where he was “completely deprived of all means of communication.”
It is possible that Rashad Gyandzhinsky will become one of the last thieves in law, who was given the opportunity to consider his case with the participation of jurors. Recall that recently a draft law on amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation was submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, after the adoption of which cases of persons accused of occupying a higher position in the criminal hierarchy will be excluded from the jurisdiction of the jury. The authors of the amendments are confident that in this way a more accurate legal assessment of such cases will be ensured, as well as guarantees for the safety of participants in such processes.