Support The Moscow Times!

Russian University Shooter Sentenced to Life in Prison

Timur Bekmansurov attends a sentencing hearing at the Perm Regional Court. Donat Sorokin / TASS

A Russian teenager was on Wednesday sentenced to life in jail for killing six people in a shooting spree on a university campus in 2021, investigators said.

During the attack — one of the worst in recent Russian history — first-year law student Timur Bekmansurov roamed through a busy university campus in the Urals city of Perm, some 1,300 kilometers east of Moscow, wielding a hunting rifle.

The shooting by the 19-year-old claimed the lives of one man and five women aged between 18 and 66, and injured dozens more before Bekmansurov was arrested.

He was found guilty on multiple counts of murder committed "for motives relating to hooliganism" and sentenced to life in prison, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. 

During his trial, Bekmansurov fully admitted his guilt and asked the court for a more lenient sentence. 

The Perm shooting in September 2021 was the second such attack that year after a 19-year-old former student shot dead nine people at his old high school in the city of Kazan in May. 

Mass shootings at schools and universities in Russia are relatively rare and prompted lawmakers to tighten laws regulating access to guns.

The last major shooting took place in September in the central Russian city of Izhevsk, where a man opened fire in his former school, leaving 18 people dead, most of them children.

… we have a small favor to ask.

As you may have heard, The Moscow Times, an independent news source for over 30 years, has been unjustly branded as a "foreign agent" by the Russian government. This blatant attempt to silence our voice is a direct assault on the integrity of journalism and the values we hold dear.

We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. Our commitment to providing accurate and unbiased reporting on Russia remains unshaken. But we need your help to continue our critical mission.

Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just 2. It's quick to set up, and you can be confident that you're making a significant impact every month by supporting open, independent journalism. Thank you.

Continue

Read more