MOSCOW -- Two former neo-Nazi activists convicted and jailed for their involvement in the killing of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009 will be transferred from penal colonies to detention centers until at least March 8 after Russia's Supreme Court annulled its previous decision to uphold their sentences.*
A lawyer of Baburova's family, Pyotr Zaikin, told the Novaya gazeta newspaper on December 8 that the Supreme Court sent the case to a cassation entity, meaning a retrial is extremely doubtful.
The Supreme Court decision comes after the European Court of Human Rights ruled in February that the 2011 trial of Nikita Tikhonov and Yevgenia Khasis, former members of the neo-Nazi group called Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN), was not fair and that the case must be revised.
Khasis's lawyer, Dmitry Agranovsky, said on December 8 that he hopes the sentences of his client and her associate will eventually be annulled following the Supreme Court's latest decision.
Markelov and Baburova, who were known for crusading against ultranationalist violence, were shot dead in broad daylight near the Kremlin in 2009.
In 2011, Tikhonov was found guilty of murdering Markelov and Baburova and sentenced to life in prison. Khasis was handed an 18-year prison term for assisting Tikhonov.
Markelov had represented investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006, as well as civilians in the North Caucasus region of Chechnya who were abused by Russian troops.
The killings sparked accusations that the Kremlin was not doing enough to hunt down the attackers of activists and journalists at the time.