MOSCOW, June 2 (RAPSI, Alexei Afonsky) – Ilya Goryachev pleaded not guilty in the Moscow City Court on Tuesday to setting up a notorious extremist movement BORN, that stands for "militant organization of Russian nationalists", masterminding multiple killings, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

A prosecutor read out the indictment and listed Goryachev’s alleged crimes for the jury on Tuesday. He stands charged with creating a criminal group for the purpose of attacking people, with masterminding five murders, with a premeditated racial murder as part of a group, and with the illegal acquisition and possession of explosives.

The prosecutor said Goryachev never committed the crimes single-handedly but controlled his criminal group remotely, sometimes far from the site of a crime.

Goryachev has denied all of the four charges.

According to investigators, nationalists Ilya Goryachev and Nikita Tikhonov created the Military Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN) in Moscow in mid-2008.

Members of BORN have been charged with racketeering, illegal weapons trafficking and several counts of homicide, including the deaths of federal judge Eduard Chuvashov, lawyer Stanislav Markelov, and several leaders of Russian anti-Nazi movements.

Markelov was killed in Moscow in January 2009. Investigators believe he was murdered for his active participation in an anti-Nazi movement.

Chuvashov was shot and killed in the stairwell of his Moscow apartment building in 2010. During his career with the Moscow City Court, he reviewed over 20 high-profile criminal cases, some of which involved racial murder.

Goryachev was placed on the international wanted list and in November 2013 extradited from Serbia.

Tikhonov, who is believed to be one of the group’s leaders, was convicted and sentenced in May 2011 to life in prison for the murder of Markelov and Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova.

Tikhonov got 18 extra years in prison last September for killing Chuvashov.

His accomplice, Yevgenia Khasis, was given 18 years behind bars.

In April this year, the Moscow Region Court sentenced two other BORN members to life imprisonment and another person to 24 years in prison.