The last of five police officers convicted in the case of drugs being planted on journalist Ivan Golunov has been released

The last of five police officers convicted in the case of drugs being planted on journalist Ivan Golunov has been released

The Kirovo-Chepetsk court in Russia’s Kirov region replaced part of former police officer Igor Lyakhovets’s sentence with compulsory labour, Kommersant reports.

Lyakhovets was deputy head of the drug control department of Moscow’s Western Administrative District police directorate. He was arrested in January 2020 in the case of drugs being planted on journalist Ivan Golunov. The court later sentenced Lyakhovets to 11.5 years in a penal colony.

Four of his subordinates were arrested along with him and also received prison sentences.

The court was able to replace the unserved part of Lyakhovets’s sentence with compulsory labour only after the former police officer had served half of his 11.5-year sentence, Kommersant notes.

Lyakhovets’s subordinates, who received shorter sentences, were released earlier. Lyakhovets thus became the last of the five defendants in the case of drugs being planted on Ivan Golunov to be released from prison

@meduzalive