MOSCOW, January 26 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Supreme Court on February 24 will consider an appeal filed by Said Amirov, the former mayor of Dagestan's capital Makhachkala, against life sentence, RAPSI learnt in the court on Tuesday.

Amirov who had been convicted of killing Arsen Gadzhibekov, the director of the Investigative Committee in one of the districts of Makhachkala, and organising a 2011 terrosrist attack in a shopping mall in the city of Kaspiysk was given life sentence on August 27, 2015, 

His nephew, Yusup Dzhaparov, who was a deputy mayor of Kaspiysk, was sentenced to 18 years in a high security prison and 18 months of supervised release.

Six other men who had been also convicted in this case received long jail terms ranging from 10 to 22 years. 

Gadzhibekov at the time of his death worked on a number of high-profile criminal cases, including the 2010 twin bombings in Kizlyar, a town on the border with Chechnya, that left 10 killed and 270 injured. He was also investigating misconduct allegations against members of the Makhachkala city administration headed by Amirov, according to Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin.

Confident in their impunity, Amirov and his accomplices threatened and intimidated their rivals, Markin said. 

In July 2014, Amirov and Dzhaparov were sentenced to 10 and eight and a half years in prison, respectively, for plotting a murder attempt on Sagid Murtazaliyev, head of the Pension Fund in Dagestan and a prominent Russian wrestler, whose plane was supposed to be shot down by a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.