Russian Interior Ministry officers, Senior Lieutenant Yevgeny Khudyakov and Lieutenant Sergei Arakcheyev, are accused of killing three employees of a construction firm in Grozny, the capital of the North Caucasus republic, in January 2003.
The move to postpone the trial follows Arakcheyev's request for his defense lawyer to be replaced. The defendant's new lawyer, Vladimir Kirilenko, then asked the court to give him several days to familiarize himself with the case.
The servicemen have been cleared of murder in jury trials twice, but both times the Supreme Court's military collegium overturned the jury's not-guilty verdict, most recently in May 2006, following a Constitutional Court ruling dated April 6 that serious crimes committed in Chechnya should be examined by courts martial, not jurors.
Earlier, Chechen President Alu Alkhanov disputed the constitutionality of court legislation allowing a non-Chechen jury to try people suspected of committing crimes in Chechnya.
