Penza, 19 February 2016. PenzaNews. The sentence to Botirzhon Musazhonov and Feruza Akhmedova, two citizens of Uzbekistan, who contracted a hitman to kill another person, has entered into force.

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“The court found that Botirzhon Musazhonov decided to contract a hitman to murder a Penza city resident. To do so, in 2015, he brought a pistol with four ammunition rounds via car from St. Petersburg, and gave it, along with the photos, address and phone number of the victim-to-be, to his acquaintance, Feruza Akhmedova. The woman located the hitman, actually a police officer undercover. The killer would receive 250,000 rubles for the hit. On May 2, he provided information about the allegedly executed kill to his contractors, and received 8,000 rubles from Feruza Akhmedova, along with a promise from her to pay out the remainder in the future,” Natalya Bychenkova, press secretary of the Penza regional court, informed PenzaNews agency.

According to her, Botirzhon Musazhonov declined to plead guilty during the court session.

“He explained that he bought the ammunition on Feruza Akhmedova’s request, while she was the orchestrator behind the crime. However, earlier, during the preliminary investigation, he admitted the guilt and explained that he had been working as a taxi driver in St. Petersburg, entered a disagreement with the Uzbekistan-born person in question due to various reasons – in particular, the man in question owed him a sum of about 5 million Uzbek sums. He asked Feruza Akhmedova, his lover, to find a hitman for the crime, as he himself does not speak Russian,” she said.

Moreover, according to the testimony of the woman, Natalya Bychenkova added, she lived in Kaliningrad, where she agreed to find the hitman, but declined to go to Penza.

“When Botirzhon Musazhonov threatened to murder her, she was forced to comply. She told the hitman the kill will be an alleged revenge for raping her niece, who committed suicide afterwards,” the court press secretary explained.

As Natalya Bychenkova pointed out, the court took into account a number of factors, such as underage children born to the families of the guilty, in the verdict.

“As a result, the court sentenced Botirzhon Musazhonov and Feruza Akhmedova to 8 and 5.5 years in maximum-security and general-security penal colonies, respectively. The man appealed the verdict, but unsuccessfully,” she concluded.