MOSCOW, November 20 (RAPSI) – A Russian court sentenced a gang leader and two other members to life imprisonment for a 2010 massacre at a farmer’s house in southern Russia that left 12 dead, including four children.
Sergei Tsapok, the ringleader of a crime gang in the Krasnodar Region, was given a life sentence along with two other men found guilty of multiple killings. Tsapok will be eligible for release after 25 years, but was also given a two-year suspended sentence Tuesday, which will be outstanding even if he is released.
He was additionally ordered to pay out 700,000 rubles ($21,000) in fines and an as yet unknown sum in compensation to the families of his victims. Earlier it was said that the relatives of Tsapok's victims had demanded over 2.4 billion rubles ($75 million). Another three gang members were given sentences of 19 and 20 years.
According to a statement read at the Krasnodar Regional Court, Tsapok wanted to find and kill the people responsible for the murder of his brother Nikolai, the gang’s former leader. According to the Investigative Committee, Tsapok thought that farmer Server Ametov had ordered Nikolai’s murder. As a result, members of Tsapok’s gang attacked Ametov’s house in a village in the Krasnodar Region in November 2010 and brutally murdered 12 people.
Tsapok and his gang, which reportedly terrorized the Krasnodar Region for years before its members were apprehended, have been found guilty of numerous other crimes.
