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A Russian court has sentenced a man convicted of murdering opposition leader Boris Nemtsov to 20 years in jail and handed terms of between 11 and 19 years to four other men convicted of being his accomplices.
Key points:
- Nemtsov was one of Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics when murdered in 2015
- Five men received sentences between 11 and 20 years for the killing
- Lawyer of killer Zaur Dadayev says he has "incontrovertible proof" his client is innocent
Nemtsov, one of President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics, was murdered in 2015 as he walked across a bridge near the Kremlin after dining with his girlfriend.
Aged 55, he had been working on a report examining Russia's role in the conflict in Ukraine.
His killing sent a chill through opposition circles.
The same court last month found the five men guilty of killing Nemtsov, but the late politician's allies said the investigation had been a cover-up and that the people who had ordered his killing remained at large.
The court handed the longest sentence, of 20 years, to Zaur Dadayev, a former soldier in Chechnya and the man state prosecutors said pulled the trigger.
The other four Chechen men convicted of being his accomplices received jail sentences ranging from 11 to 19 years.
"The shortcoming of this sentencing is that those who ordered and organised this crime are not in the dock," said Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for Nemtsov's daughter Zhanna.
State prosecutors said the group had followed Nemtsov around the Russian capital and been promised a bounty of 15 million roubles ($AU320,000) between them for the high-profile assassination.
Shamsudin Tsakayev, Dadayev's lawyer, said after the sentencing there was "incontrovertible proof" his client had not committed the crime.
Reuters
Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, security-intelligence, world-politics, russian-federation, european-union
First posted