5 found guilty of murdering Russian opposition leader

The Moscow military court on Thursday found five Chechens guilty of having assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015.

Nemtsov, 55, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and a former deputy Prime Minister, was shot by Chechen gunman Zaur Dadayev as he was walking across a bridge just outside the Kremlin, the Independent reported.

Russian news agencies said a jury at a Moscow court found that Dadayev, a former officer in the security forces of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, guilty of murdering Nemtsov.

Four other men, also Chechen according to the BBC, were found guilty of involvement in the killing.

The jury found they had acted as Dadayev's accomplices and that the group had been promised a bounty of $253,000.

Nemtsov was killed on February 27, 2015, just two days before he was due to take part in a mass rally against Russian involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

--IANS

soni/bg