Damn Cursed Country: Mafia Rules, Justice Corrupt

A court in Russia’s Far East on Monday sentenced three men to four years in prison each for carrying out a firebomb attack that killed a coast guard general and badly injured his wife.

Major General Vitaly Gamov and his wife

Major General Vitaly Gamov, who was in charge of the coast guard in the Russian Far East, died from his burns in a Japanese hospital after attackers threw gasoline bombs through the windows of his apartment on Sakhalin Island in May 2002.

The three attackers were convicted by a jury in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk last month, and were sentenced by the Sakhalin Regional Court on Monday. The three men were found guilty of “reckless arson which led to a death” (think of it – throwing firebombs was just a reckless step), but not of premeditated murder.

Gamov’s widow, Larisa, who underwent months of treatment and plastic surgery in Japan for her burns, denounced the sentence as too lenient and said she would appeal it.

“They have committed such an atrocity to my family,” she said in televised remarks. “I hope for justice.”

The three men have been in custody since their arrest last year (that is they have just three years left to stay in jail – after that they’ll be set free).

Officials have blamed Gamov’s killing on Russian criminals involved in fishing trade in the Pacific coast, and said he was killed in revenge for his efforts to fight poachers who sell their catch to Japan, South Korea and China (the man was defending his country’s resources and wealth, and his country isn’t even grateful to him. The hero is now dead, the criminals are alive and we’ll be set free pretty soon)

Authorities alleged that a local crime lord had ordered the attack on Gamov, but the man was killed in South Korea in an apparent settling of scores between criminals. What we can conclude – the Russian government pays no honor to the country’s heroes. Quite contrary – it encourages criminals to kill them because there would be almost no punishment for that.

Damn, cursed country….

PS If you haven’t done it yet, read one of our previous posts, when a former Russian mayor killed five people and wasn’t even taken into custody, while the court found him not guilty.