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A Russian Colonel on trial for the murder of a young Chechen woman is to be sent for psychiatric tests to assess his mental state when he strangled her.
Colonel Yuri Budanov is the first senior Russian officer to be tried for offences committed during the ongoing conflict in Chechnya.
The tests, which could take up to three months are the latest twist in a deeply controversial trial.
Colonel Budanov admits strangling Kheda Kungayev, who was just 18 years old when she died.
Inconclusive tests
However, the colonel claims she was a Chechen sniper and that he killed her in a fit of rage, during an interrogation in his army tent, late at night.
 This is the first trial of a Russian soldier over Chechnya |
The question the court now wants answered, is whether Yuri Budanov was temporarily insane when he committed the attack.
Two previous psychiatric investigations have proved inconclusive, so now the court is sending him for a third.
Military psychiatrists will also be involved, a move the lawyer representing the family of the murdered girl has argued against.
Rape
The lawyer fears that army experts have an interest in seeing the colonel diagnosed as mad rather than criminal, it could me that he would go free despite admitting the killing.
The family of Kheda Kungayev, was already upset that forensic evidence that their daughter had been raped was never made part of the charges against the colonel.
This long running trial has split Russia, with some people still seeing colonel Budanov as a Russian hero for his actions during the long-running conflict in Chechnya.
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