Putin murder plotter jailed for 10 years: prosecutor

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A man convicted of plotting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin by blowing up his motorcade was jailed for 10 years on Tuesday, the prosecutor-general's office said. A Moscow court found Ilya Pyanzin hatched the plan with two other men in 2011 at the behest of Doku Umarov, the leader of an Islamist insurgency in Russia's North Caucasus region, the office added. Pyanzin, born in 1984 in then-Soviet Kazakhstan, was arrested early in January last year when an explosive device went off in an apartment in southern Ukraine, killing an alleged accomplice, authorities said. But news of his detention was only released days before Russia's presidential election in March 2012. Opposition politicians said the announcement, and a videotaped confession shown on Russian television, had been timed to boost Putin's popularity in the vote, which he won easily. Pyanzin was convicted of banditry, plotting an attempt on the life of a state official and illegally preparing and storing explosives, the statement from the prosecutor-general's office said. A third man accused of plotting the assassination, Adam Osmayev, is on trial in Ukraine. Islamist separatists in the North Caucasus, whose insurgency is rooted in two separatist wars in Chechnya, carry out near daily attacks in the mountainous region. They revile Putin for ordering troops into the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya in 1999 to return the region to federal control. (Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; Editing by Andrew Heavens)