Russian colonel gets 10 years for Chechen murder

A Russian colonel was jailed for 10 years today for kidnapping and murdering a Chechen woman.

Yuri Budanov had admitted strangling Heda Kungayeva, 18, but said he did it in a fit of rage during an interrogation. In December, a court ruled that Budanov was temporarily insane at the time of the killing and was not criminally responsible.

However, the Supreme Court overturned that decision and ordered a new trial.

Budanov's trial in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don was widely watched throughout Russia for a signal into how the military plans to deal with reports of abuses in Chechnya, which have undermined the Kremlin's efforts to build trust in the war-ravaged republic.

The military court today declared that Budanov was sane at the time of the 2000 killing and ordered the prison term along with stripping him of his military rank and his Order of Courage.

Kungayeva's family has said that she was dragged from her home in a Chechen village, raped and murdered during a drunken rampage by soldiers.