Aslan Khagundokov acquitted in the murder of a Moscow official

A Moscow court acquitted Kabardino-Balkaria resident Aslan Khagundokov of the 2012 murder of a Moscow official. Khagundokov remains in prison on a conviction handed down ten years ago for the murder of a Rostov businessman.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," Aslan Khagundokov, a second-degree disabled person, was sentenced to 13 years for the murder of businessman Pyotr Arzhanik in Rostov-on-Don. He has been serving a sentence for nearly ten years for a crime that, according to his sister and defense attorneys, he did not commit. In 2022, his lawyer successfully opened a criminal case in Kabardino-Balkaria for Khagundokov's abduction in September 2014. Khagundokov's sister reported that unknown individuals kidnapped her brother and tortured him into confessing.

Based on a jury verdict, the Moscow City Court acquitted Aslan Khagundokov, a native of Kabardino-Balkaria, of the 2012 murder of Oleg Gvozdev, an employee of the Social Insurance Fund (SIF) in 2012. The verdict was handed down on November 13, Kommersant reported.

According to the newspaper, the prosecutor's office intends to appeal Khagundokov's acquittal. The prosecution alleged that Khagundokov acted with an unidentified accomplice in November 2012 when he attacked 33-year-old Gvozdev in central Moscow. Gvozdev was killed by multiple knife wounds to the heart. The investigation initially linked the murder of the Social Insurance Fund employee to his professional activities.

Aslan Khagundokov only appeared as a defendant in the case in 2024. Investigators claimed that his involvement in the Moscow murder was established through low-quality CCTV footage and the results of a genetic analysis of traces from gloves found at the crime scene.

The defense of the Kabardino-Balkarian native pointed out that there were no direct witnesses or reliable evidence in the case. According to lawyer Lev Dorofeev, "they were simply trying to pin an unsolved case on Aslan Khagundokov." He also noted that the people who appeared in the video recordings from the scenes of the murders of Oleg Gvozdev in Moscow and Pyotr Arzhanik in Rostov-on-Don “are completely different from each other anthropometrically,” the crimes themselves are significantly different, and at the same time, the investigation did not establish any motive for Khagundokov to kill in either case.