Chechen Gets 15 Years for Killing Notorious Russian Colonel

A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a Chechen man to 15 years in prison for murdering a former Russian colonel, who notoriously strangled to death a young Chechen woman, a spokesman said.

According to investigators, Yusup Temerkhanov killed Yuri Budanov to avenge the death of his father who perished during a "counter-terrorist" operation conducted by Russian forces in Chechnya in 2000.

Believed to be driven by hatred for the Russian troops, he picked as his victim the high-profile former colonel Budanov, whose name became a byword for crimes committed by the Russian army against civilians during years of fighting with Chechen separatists.

Budanov had been convicted of the murder by strangling in 2000 in Chechnya of Elza Kungayeva but was regarded as a nationalist hero by extremists.

He was released from jail in 2009 after serving only part of his 10-year sentence.

Bodanov was murdered by a gunman who pumped multiple bullets into his skull in June 2011 in southwest Moscow as he emerged from an office building.

Temerkhanov was arrested several months after the murder.

Moscow City Court spokesman Mikhail Artyukh said that after serving his 15-year sentence, Temerkhanov will be on supervised release for another 1.5 years.

The Kremlin fought two post-Soviet wars against separatists in Chechnya and the violence has since spread into the nearby regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia.

Russia in 2009 formally ended a decade-long "counter-terror" operation in Chechnya, citing the return of relative stability to the mainly Muslim region.

But attacks on government officials and police including those by suicide bombers remain frequent in the North Caucasus.