An Iranian and Tajik jailed for life for their parts in the assassination of a Chechen military commander last year have had their sentences overturned.
Without explanation, the Dubai Appeal Court limited the sentences of Iranian Mahdi Lorniya and Tajik Makhsudzhon Ismatov to 27 months.
Lawyer Lorni Abdulli Al-Madani said the two men have already spent 21 months in prison, which will be counted in the new sentences.
"We find this decision to be just; we expected it," Al-Madani told RIA Novosti.
Ziyad Sabsabi, the deputy chairman of the Russian Federal Council's international committee, said the decision paves the way for the dropping of charges against other suspects in the case.
Sulim Yamadayev, 35, a former battalion commander and a member of a prominent family which opposed Chechnya's pro-Kremlin leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was assassinated in the United Arab Emirates on March 28, 2009.
Yamadayev, an ethnic Chechen and holder of the Hero of Russia medal, was shot three times in the chest by a gunman in an underground car park in Dubai. He joined the ranks of a number of Kadyrov's foes to have been assassinated in recent years.
Dubai police accused Adam Delimkhanov, a close ally of the 33 year-old rebel-turned-leader of Chechnya, of ordering Yamadayev's killing. Both Delimkhanov and Kadyrov have vehemently denied any involvement.
In January 2009, Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard for Kadyrov who had accused him of torture and kidnapping, was gunned down by two men on a street in Vienna.
Yamadayev's brother, Ruslan, was shot dead as his car stood at traffic lights in central Moscow in September 2008.
DUBAI, December 22 (RIA Novosti)
