MOSCOW, December 20 (RIA Novosti) - A Moscow Region court has dismissed the jury in the case of an attempt on the life of Anatoly Chubais, the head of Russia's electricity monopoly, a RIA Novosti correspondent said Wednesday.
The assassination attempt was made in March 2005, when Chubais's car came under automatic gunfire near Moscow. The Unified Energy System CEO and architect of 1990s reforms was not injured in the attack.
Chubais's lawyers said members of the jury had come under "unprecedented pressure" during the trial, with pickets being staged outside the court building.
"If you think I am pleased that the jury has been dismissed, you're mistaken," lawyer Andrei Shugayev said. "A large amount of work has been accomplished; numerous materials have been studied, and witnesses questioned. But now it turns out that all this has been in vain."
However, the lawyer denied media reports that the case has collapsed.
The dismissal of the jury was demanded by the prosecution over breaches of due process.
Prosecutors alleged that some media outlets published information on the hearing, even though the trial was held behind closed doors.
A lawyer for the defense said earlier the prosecutors' move could have been linked to the arrest of a fourth suspect in the case, Ivan Mironov.
Two former officers of the Airborne Troops and one former officer of the General Staff were previously arrested, and are defendants in the case.
According to prosecutors, the defendants were motivated by their extremist views and a violent dislike of Chubais, an architect of economic reforms in the 1990s that impoverished millions and gave vast fortunes to a handful of well-connected oligarchs.
Chubais is now behind a series of unpopular decisions to raise electricity tariffs.
Mironov was arrested last week together with his father, Boris Mironov, a suspect in a separate inquiry into the incitement of inter-ethnic hatred.
A former head of the Russian Print Media Committee, Boris Mironov is accused of making anti-Semitic speeches in 2003 while running for governor of Siberia's Novosibirsk Region.
