- Date
- 07/01/2003
- First
- Vladimir
- Surname
- SUKHOMLIN
- Sex/Age
- M, 23
- Incident
- homicide
- Motive
- J
- Place
- outskirts
- Job
- journalist
- Medium
- internet
- Federal District Plus
- Moscow
- Street, Town, Region
- Narofominskaya St, Moscow
- Freelance
- no
- Local/National
- national
- Other Ties
- Cause of Death
- murder, beaten
- Legal Qualification
- 105.2 (murder)
- Impunity
- trial, conviction, 01 April 2004
CJES, 1-2 (2003)
The body of Vladimir Sukhomlin, 23, was found in Moscow on January 8. The killers, police officers whom their customer promised to pay $1,200 for the job, abducted the man from the Cinecomplex on Leninsky Prospekt on January 4 and beaten him to death on the outskirts of the city. The law enforcement agencies have not disclosed yet everything that they know. Sukhomlin was one of the organizers of the Military History Forum Internet portal where he was in charge of several divisions. He was the first programmer who started back in 1996 to develop resources and technologies to be used in information warfare. In particular, his Serbia.ru and Chechnya.ru sites have been used in countering Internet media operated by terrorist and extremist organizations.
CJES, 18 (2004)
The Moscow city court handed down prison terms to the three men involved in the murder of reporter Vladimir Sukhomlin. Ivan Goncharov and Denis Melikhov were found guilty of murder and will serve 18 and 14 years respectively in high security prisons. Denis Vorotnikov was found guilty of complicity to murder and will serve ten years in a high security prison. Moreover, Goncharov and Vorotnikov are banned from serving in law enforcement agencies for three years.
“The court ruled to recover one million rubles from each Goncharov and Melikhov in favor of Sukhomlin’s family. Vorotnikov will pay 500,000 rubles to the victims,” Judge Pyotr Shtunder announced. The court considered the young age of the accused an extenuating circumstance. Moreover, Melikhov voluntarily turned himself in to law enforcement agencies. The aggravated nature of the crime was noted in the verdict, Shtunder said.
Sukhomlin was one of the founders of the Internet portal for the Military-historic forum and websites serbia.ru and chechnya.ru. Sukhomlin, then 23, went missing on January 5, 2003. A criminal case was launched on January 6 in the wake of a statement from the relatives. The body was found on January 7 at a vacant ground near building 2, Narofominskaya Street.
Goncharov and Vorotnikov, servicemen of the Balashikha department in the Moscow region, were detained as the murder suspects on January 8, 2003. They testified that Plastorg director Dmitry Ivanychev contracted them to beat up the reporter for a fee of $1,150. Goncharov and Vorotnikov said they and Melikhov, an employee of a private guard company, pushed Sukhomlin into a car and drove to vacant ground. They inflicted multiple injuries on Sukhomlin and took pictures during the beating. The photographs were handed over to Ivanychev.