The Chisinau Court of Appeals refused to put under house arrest the 24-year-old man suspected of killing four persons, including a girl aged 4, and injuring a 70-year-old man three years and a half ago as his lawyers Veaceslav Turcan and Svetlana Nenita asked on January 16. The suspect was arrested in September 2007 in Russia and was extradited in December 2008. He is now held in the isolator of the General Police Department in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. The crime was committed on July 10, 2005 in an apartment on Albisoara Street of Chisinau’s Rascani district. The young man is suspected of killing the female owner of the apartment aged 65, two young women from Orhei town and a four-year-old girl. The bodies bore signs of violent death like knife stabs. A man aged 70 was injured in the same apartment. The lawyers asked that the suspect is put under house arrest, saying he is held in inhuman conditions and is maltreated by the guardians. “The detention conditions are degrading and anti-sanitary. He is not allowed to use bedlinen, is tortured and there is no daylight,” Veaceslav Turcan said. The lawyer says that the suspect is innocent. “It is impossible that a person of such a short stature and without professional training could kill four persons alone. Our client leased a cheaper apartment that evening. When he went there, he found two women and two men in the apartment. When the crime was committed, the young man was in the bathroom,” the lawyer said. “Two of the killed persons aged 20 and 23 provided sexual services and we think that it was a kind of revenge by those that trafficked earlier the two girls to Turkey, where they managed to run away,” Veaceslav Turcan said. According to lawyer Svetlana Nenita, the accused hid from the police because he was afraid of torture. “He wanted to surrender himself to the police, but wasn’t sure that he will be offered a fair trial in this state. The suspect saw the persons that committed the crime, but cannot say who they are because his life will be in danger. At the same time, the authorities do not want to hear another hypothesis,” Svetlana Nenita said. When caught in Russia the suspect had forged identification papers on him. Therefore, the police in Russia tried to establish how he obtained the forged documents so as to hold him accountable. After investigating the case, a Russian court decided to extradite him to Moldova. Under the Moldovan law, the suspect is liable to up to 25 years in jail or life imprisonment over the murder of four persons.