Zaur Dadayev, the gunman who fatally shot Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in February 2015, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Moscow military court on Thursday following his conviction in late June. Prosecutors originally asked for Dadayev, a former member of an elite security battalion in Chechnya, to receive life in prison. On Thursday, Dadayev’s four accomplices were sentenced to 11 to 19 years in jail. Anzor Gubashev, the man who allegedly drove Dadayev to and from the crime scene, received a 19-year prison sentence, while his brother, Shadid, was sentenced to 16 years. The remaining accomplices, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov and Khamzat Bakhayev, were sentenced to 14 and 11 years, respectively, for helping plan the murder.
All five men smirked and laughed as they received their verdicts on Thursday from behind a glass enclosure. One of the men used the steam fogging up the glass to scroll out the phrase, “A LIE,” which he misspelled, the BBC reports. During their testimony, the men claimed that people would be forced to “answer” for their unfair imprisonment. Their defense lawyers now say they will appeal some of the charges. On Thursday, Eskerkhanov’s lawyer told The Moscow Times that she expected Eskerkhanov and Bakhayev to be pardoned, arguing that “everyone understands” her client’s innocence.