The court arrested for two months those accused of murdering the driver of lawyer Viktor Patrushev in St. Petersburg – Andrei Artyukhin and Ginteras Ragauskas, the United Press Service of the St. Petersburg Courts reported on February 23 in its Telegram channel.
Thus, the court granted the investigation's request to select a preventive measure.
Those arrested will remain in pre-trial detention until April 17.
“Artyukhin didn’t object to the guards, but Ragauskas did. Ragauskas refused to testify on the basis of Art. 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Ragauskas’ lawyer asked for house arrest,” the court clarified.
The defendant intends to appeal the preventive measure.
Earlier on Friday, the Ministry of Internal Affairs showed a video of the operation of detaining the accused. The arrest of the alleged organizers of the murder took place earlier that day. The Ministry of Internal Affairs noted that the murder of the 41-year-old driver from Uzbekistan was committed by mistake.
The crime was committed on February 20. The driver brought Patrushev’s children to the gymnasium in a Toyota Camry. The man got out of the car to accompany them to the school, but when the driver was returning to the car, an unknown person shot him in the back of the head.
The wounded driver died in the Elizabeth Hospital without regaining consciousness on February 22. Before this, he had undergone several emergency operations in intensive care, but they could not save him. The previously initiated criminal case of attempted murder (Part 3 of Article 30, Part 1 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) has now been reclassified as “Murder for Hire” (Clause 3 of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As established, Patrushev had a conflict within the framework of his legal practice. His opponent turned to his friend and offered him 5 million rubles to eliminate the lawyer. However, the executor of the planned contract killing made a mistake, mistaking the driver of the car for its owner.
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