In Yekaterinburg, a repeat offender dubbed a "ghoul" was sentenced for a double murder committed 24 years ago.

      In Yekaterinburg, a recidivist who had previously been convicted of a similar crime was sentenced for the brutal murder of two women committed by him 24 years ago, the Sverdlovsk Region prosecutor’s office reported on Tuesday.

      On the night of September 6–7, 2001, the accused, Djalal Mikanaev, while in an apartment on Menzhinskogo Street in Yekaterinburg, was drinking alcoholic beverages with two women he knew. A quarrel broke out between them and Mikanaev, during which the man formed the intent to kill both.

      The accused smashed a glass tumbler against the surface of the table and struck one of the women, banging her head against the tabletop on which fragments of glass remained. Pressing the woman’s head face-first to the tabletop, he began literally driving it into the shards. He hit the second woman on the head with his fist. Afterwards he strangled both women with the belt of one of the victims’ sweaters.

      During an examination of the crime scene in the apartment, a cognac bottle with a clear fingerprint was found. It matched a print discovered on a glass bottle at the scene of the killing of a woman in a hotel committed in December 2001. Both prints belong to Mikanaev, who had been serving time for the hotel murder.

      Mikanaev was detained at his registered address — in one of the apartments in a building on Stakhanovskaya Street in Yekaterinburg, Valery Gorelykh, head of the press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region, said.

      In addition to the sentence served for the murder of the woman, Mikanaev had been convicted of illegal arms circulation, a sexual offense, and theft, Colonel Gorelykh said.

      Today, November 25, the Kirovsky District Court of Yekaterinburg found 54-year-old Djalal Mikanaev guilty under paragraph “a” of part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (murder of two persons) and, taking into account the position of the state prosecutor, sentenced him to 16 years in a strict-regime penal colony.

      Also today the Karpinsky City Court handed down a sentence to a 46-year-old local resident who, 22 years ago, committed the murder of an acquaintance of an 11-year-old girl. The Volchansk resident was sent to a strict-regime penal colony for 25 years. He must also pay the victim’s side one million rubles in compensation for moral damage.