MOSCOW - Three Russian commandos who admitted murdering six Chechen civilians were declared fugitives Friday after failing to appear in court for the closing sessions of their trial.
Judge Nikolai Gulko ordered the military prosecutor to put the servicemen on the wanted list after they missed a second consecutive session at the military court in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, footage from the courtroom on NTV television showed.
Prosecutors in the trial, seen as a test case for attempts to punish war crimes in Chechnya, last week demanded prison terms of 18-23 years for the soldiers, who are from the army's secretive Main Intelligence Directorate, known in Russia as GRU.
Defence lawyers were due to make closing arguments this week.
The three GRU men admit to shooting six Chechens, including a pregnant woman, on a mountain road in southern Chechnya in January 2002, but say they are innocent because they were following orders.
Lawyers for the trio said Friday that they had no idea where their clients are currently located and that their mobile phones have been disconnected, Russian news agencies reported.
A fourth defendant -- a major who says he relayed the fatal order delivered over the radio from a higher-ranking officer -- did appear in court. The trial has now been suspended until May 24.
Murat Musayev, a lawyer for the victims' relatives, said they had "repeatedly asked for the accused to be limited in their movements" during the trial.
This is the third trial, following two successive acquittals by juries in Rostov-on-Don. Those decisions were overturned by higher courts on technicalities.
The case has been seen as a test of Russia's ability to confront what human rights experts say have been mass war crimes in Chechnya since troops first tried to crush an independence rebellion in 1994.
The incident near the Chechen village of Dai began when the GRU men, led by Captain Eduard Ulman, mistakenly opened fire on a car packed with civilians, killing one and wounding two.
After delivering first aid and radioing their superiors, the soldiers later shot the five survivors in cold blood. The GRU operatives say this was ordered over the radio in an attempt to wipe out any witnesses to the original mistake.
Only a handful of Russian soldiers or officers have faced trial, despite widespread accusations of torture, summary executions and indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas during the fighting in Chechnya.
Growing numbers of Chechens are addressing the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Some 200 cases concerning Chechnya are currently pending at the court, half of them relating to people who disappeared.
The episode has also put the spotlight on the relatively new concept of jury trials in Russia, legalised in 1993 but only introduced nationwide from 2003. The GRU members' case is now being tried by a panel of three judges, with no jury.
04/13/2007 13:45 GMT