The prosecutor’s office, without mentioning the names of the persons, states that the prosecutor has sent a criminal case to the court, in which three persons are accused of burning down the Museum of Occupation in an organized group at the beginning of this year.
According to the indictment, at the beginning of 2024, while serving a prison sentence in Daugavgriva prison, during a telephone conversation, one of the defendants persuaded his acquaintance Vitalyas Lukyanov to find a person who would break a window of a building and throw a bottle of fuel mixture into it for 4,500 US dollars.
After that, Lukyanov found Valentina Razmeritsa, who agreed to carry out the arson for 2,000 euros.
During the subsequent communication, the customer through Lukyanov gave the information to the arsonist that the Museum of Occupation would have to be set on fire, as well as transferred the money to commit the crime through another person.
The two defendants arrived in Riga and made a bottle with a fuel mixture. After that, around midnight, he went to Old Riga, where the arsonist broke the window glass of the first floor of the building of the Occupation Museum with a homemade hammer and threw a bottle with an incendiary mixture inside the building, causing a fire in an area of about 0.5 square meters.
With their actions, the defendants destroyed and damaged the property of the Society of the Latvian Occupation Museum in the amount of more than 10,000 euros.
All three defendants are currently in prison. The mediator and the executor were only detained a couple of days after the arson and were given a security measure – detention, but the client continues to serve the previously imposed sentence – deprivation of liberty.
All the accused have been punished before.
The intermediary and the executor have fully admitted their guilt in the accusation brought against them and regret what they have done, while the customer, who was in prison, refused to express his attitude towards the accusation.
The commission of such a crime is punishable by imprisonment for up to ten years with or without probation supervision of up to three years.
LETA already announced that on the night of February 27, 2024, an incendiary mixture was thrown into the Museum of Occupation and the flames destroyed the museum director’s office.
After the incident, the State Police started criminal proceedings for the intentional destruction or damage of someone else’s property, if it was done by burning or in another generally dangerous way. Imprisonment of up to ten years can be applied for such an offence.
Later, three persons were arrested in this criminal case – a citizen of Latvia, who had previously come under the police’s attention in connection with drugs, a resident of Olaine, who had previously been tried for property crimes, and a resident of Olaine, who had also been under the police’s attention before. At the beginning of March, the court placed all three detainees in custody as a security measure.
2024-08-16 05:53:08