Chechen charged over killer colonel ‘hit’

A CHECHEN man has been arrested and charged over the killing of Yuri Budanov, who kidnapped and strangled a teenage girl in Chechnya while a colonel in the Russian army.

A spokeswoman for a district court in Moscow, Olga Sutyapova, said yesterday that suspect Magomed Suleimanov had been charged with murder as part of a group.

Investigators believe that Suleimanov and another person agreed in April to kill Budanov, who was shot dead on 10 June in central Moscow after stepping out of a notary public’s office.

Budanov was arrested in 2000 and convicted of killing the 18-year-old girl while commanding a tank regiment in the second Chechen war. However, he was released on parole by the Russian authorities in 2008.