MOSCOW, November 20 (RIA Novosti) - A Moscow borough court has sentenced the editor in chief of an extremist publication to five years in prison for provoking ethnic hatred and making extremist calls, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Monday from the courtroom.
Boris Stomakhin regularly contributed material to Kavkaz-Center, an online publication run by Chechen separatists.
Prosecutors said Stomakhin's stories "endorsed criminals and terrorists, whose actions are aimed at destroying the Russian nation."
Stomakhin, who has been in custody since March 2006, pleaded not guilty.
"I do not understand the charges brought against me," he said, adding they are "fiction."
The public prosecutor had called for a seven-year prison sentence for Stomakhin.
