Chechen woman gets 20 years for restaurant bomb

RUSSIA: A Chechen woman whose abandoned bomb killed a policeman at a Moscow restaurant after she backed out of a plan to blow…

RUSSIA: A Chechen woman whose abandoned bomb killed a policeman at a Moscow restaurant after she backed out of a plan to blow herself up was jailed for 20 years by a Russian court yesterday.

Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, in her early 20s, was caught with a bomb in her bag last July as she tried to enter a central Moscow restaurant.

She dumped her rucksack on the pavement and tried to flee and a police bomb-disposal expert, who subsequently tried to defuse the bomb, was killed when it blew up.

She was suspected of being in the same Chechen gang as two women who blew themselves up at an open-air music festival in Moscow less than a week before her arrest, killing 14 people and themselves.

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Muzhakhoyeva's lawyer denounced the sentence as too harsh and rights groups said courts needed to investigate the violence and abuse that Russian troops inflicted on the Chechen population.

"I am not satisfied with the court's decision," Ms Natalya Yevlapova, Muzhakhoyeva's lawyer, told Ekho Moskvy radio. "Let them find her guilty, that is not disputed, but she deserved leniency after all this." Rights activist and journalist Ms Anna Politkovskaya said the Chechen woman had decided to get her revenge on those who had hurt her.

At the time of her arrest Muzhakhoyeva was said to be a widow whose husband was killed in clashes with Russian troops.

Human rights groups say torture, abuse and rape by Russian troops and pro-Moscow Chechen forces are on the increase.

Muzhakhoyeva defiantly vowed to take revenge on Russians after her conviction. "I hate you, Russians," Kommersant newspaper quoted her as saying. "I didn't want to blow anyone up. But now I'll sit in prison for 20 years, or 25, and when I return, I'll blow you all up."