Moscow, April 12: A Top judge from Moscow’s City Court who presided over high-profile racist murder cases was shot dead Monday as he left his apartment in the Russian capital, investigators said.
“Unknown assailants shot the federal judge of the Moscow City Court, Eduard Chuvashov, on the third-floor landing in the first entrance of building 24 on Strelbishchensky Street,” the investigative committee saidt.
“He died on the spot from gunshot wounds to the head and chest. The attackers fled the scene.”
Investigators were working at the crime scene and hunting for the man who pulled the trigger in the apparent contract-style killing, the committee said.
The crime was likely to have been related to Mr Chuvashov’s work, it added.
The judge presided over at least two cases of hate crimes perpetrated by ultra-nationalist groups last year, and threats against him were posted on several radical websites, said Galina Kozhevnikova of the Sova Center.
“They published his picture and extracts of audio tapes from court cases, profiling him as a danger to all Russians,” she said.
Just last week Mr Chuvashov jailed three ultra-nationalists for race-motivated murders.
In February he sentenced members of skinhead group the White Wolves to up to 23 years in jail for murders motivated by ethnic hatred.
The nine young members of the Slavic nationalist gang were found guilty of the murders of six people, mostly migrant workers from Central Asia.
Based on surveillance videos from the building, authorities profiled the judge’s killer as a young man of Slavic appearance, aged between 25 and 30, state news agency RIA Novosti quoted a police source as saying.
Mr Chuvashov recently heard a number of other high-profile cases.
His courtroom was also often in the media during a case against an agent of the federal drug control service, Alexander Bulbov, who was accused of embezzling $US3.2 million ($3.43m) and released on bail in November 2009, RIA Novosti reported.
—Agencies