A Russian court has sentenced the activist Maksim Ivankin, who is already serving a lengthy prison term in the high-profile “Set” (Network) case, to an additional 24 years in prison on a double murder conviction that he said he first confessed to under torture.
The Ryazan regional court sentenced Ivankin on February 12 after a jury found him guilty a month earlier in January of murdering Yekaterina Levchenko, 19, and Artyom Dorofeyev, 21.
Investigators say, Ivankin and his associate Aleksei Poltavets, who is currently in Ukraine, killed Levchenko and Dorofeyev in April 2017 to get rid of potential witnesses who could testify against them in court about their alleged involvement in illegal drug trades.
Ivankin rejected the charges, saying his initial confession was extracted under "torture."
In 2018, Ivankin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on a charge of taking part in a terrorist group's activities. The charge was related to the Network case, which rights defenders and opposition activities have called "fabricated."
Several members of the group were arrested in 2017-2018 for allegedly creating a terrorist group with cells in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza, and Omsk, as well as in neighboring Belarus.
Belarusian authorities told RFE/RL at the time that they weren’t aware of a Network cell existing in Belarus.
The suspects were later handed prison terms.
Russian investigators said the Network group planned to organize a series of explosions in Russia during the presidential election and the World Cup soccer tournament in 2018 "to destabilize the situation" in the country and to organize an armed mutiny.
Rights activists have said the charges are false. Several of those arrested have claimed they were tortured while in custody. The Investigative Committee has rejected the allegations.
Amnesty International has called the terror charges "a figment of the Russian security services' imagination...fabricated in an attempt to silence these activists."