Ukraine has extradited to Russia one of the suspects in a plot to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Channel One reported on Saturday.
The Court of Appeal in Odessa made a final decision on Thursday to extradite to Russia Kazakh national Ilya Pyanzin, the second suspect in an attempt to kill then-Prime Minister Putin.
“The Ukrainian special services took Pyanzin from the pre-trial detention facility where he had been held since January this year to the Odessa Airport,” Channel One said on its website.
Pyanzin is already located at the Lefortovo pre-trial detention facility in Moscow, it added.
“Investigators from the Federal Security Service will begin working with him in the nearest future,” it said.
Adam Osmayev and Ilya Pyanzin were detained in Odessa after a fellow suspect was killed in an apartment explosion there in January. They confessed shortly afterwards to planning to murder Putin at the orders of Chechen warlord Doku Umarov. The men were then charged with forming a terrorist group and plotting a terrorist attack.
On August 14, a Ukrainian appeals court ordered Adam Osmayev's extradition to Russia. The court rejected an appeal lodged by Osmayev’s defense team and upheld the extradition request from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. Osmayev’s defense then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
The decision on Osmayev’s extradition was suspended on August 22 pending the ECHR ruling.
The news of the attempted plot was released at the height of Putin's campaign to be reelected as president of Russia in the March 4 election.
