A Russian court has sentenced a notorious gangster from Russia's Republic of North Ossetia in the North Caucasus, Aslan Gagiyev (aka Dzhako), to life in prison for his role in several murders.
The South District Military Court in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don sentenced Gagiyev on September 14 after finding him guilty of leading a criminal group and organizing six murders.
Last month, a court in Moscow handed 12 members of Gagiyev's group sentences of between two years and life in prison on charges of being involved in a series of murders, attempted murders, abductions, and other crimes.
Gagiyev was extradited by Austria to Moscow in June 2018 after losing a yearslong legal battle.
He fled Russia in 2013 after being accused of organizing a criminal gang, banditry, murder, weapons trafficking, and embezzlement.
Russia has accused Gagiyev's gang of murdering 60 people in Moscow, the Moscow region, and North Ossetia in 2004-2014, including the mayor of the city of Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, as well as the republic's former deputy prime minister.
Russia's Investigative Committee said at least 24 of the gang's members have been convicted of crimes, with some receiving life sentences.
International arrest warrants were issued for seven people suspected of being members of the gang, while seven other alleged members of the group were killed between 2010 and 2014 in what officials say were scores being settled between rival groups.
Twelve other alleged members of the gang are currently under investigation.
Gagiyev was arrested at a Vienna train station in January 2015 on an international arrest warrant.
He has denied any wrongdoing and called his extradition to Russia politically motivated.
At the trial, Gagiyev confessed to his involvement in the assassination of North Ossetia's Deputy Prime Minister Kazbek Pagiyev, stressing that Zurab Makiyev, a member of Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, had ordered the murder. He did not give any evidence to back up his claim.
Gagiyev also demanded investigators make public the names of all persons, including current North Ossetian officials, implicated in the investigation, requesting to release "those who were wrongfully imprisoned in the case."