A Moscow court has sentenced Ilya Goryachev, the leader of the Combat Organization of the Russian Nationalists (commonly known as "BORN"), to life in prison for organizing a series of ethnically-motivated murders.
The website Mediazona reported that Goryachev arrived in court wearing a T-shirt featuring the patriotic slogan “Krym nash” (“Crimea is ours”). According to news agency Interfax, Goryachev fainted when the judge read his sentence.
The investigation claimed that Goryachev was party to the murders of anti-fascist activist Fyodor Filatov, guest worker Salokhiddin Azizov, lawyer Stanislav Markelov, anti-fascist activist Ilya Dzhaparidze, and student Rasul Khalilov. He is charged with first-degree murder of more than two people, organized by a criminal group and connected with banditism, motivated by ideological and ethnic hatred.
The investigation considers Ilya Goryachev to be the mastermind behind several grisly murders carried out by the combat organization BORN.
Earlier, several BORN members were found guilty of murders, hate crimes, arms trafficking, and banditism. Yuri Tikhomirov was convicted in 2012 and is currently serving a 10-year sentence in a high-security prison, Mikhail Volkov was sentenced to 24 years in jail in April 2015, and Maxim Baklagin and Mikhail Volkov were sentenced to life in April 2015.
At the 2015 BORN trial, group member Evgeniya Khasis testified that the combat organization enjoyed the patronage of members of the Kremlin.
BORN members have also been found responsible for the murders of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009.