MOSCOW, June 28 (RAPSI) - The Moscow City Court upheld on Friday a bid by prosecutors to ban the so-called Autonomous Combat Terrorist Organization (ABTO), whose members were sentenced to imprisonment in April 2012 for a series of terrorist attacks, RAPSI reports from the court.

The Supreme Court earlier accepted a complaint from ABTO leader Ivan Astashin, who has been sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for terrorism, and forwarded it to the court's presidium for consideration.

The hearing date has not yet been set. 

A similar complaint was forwarded to the presidium in January 2013, but its consideration was postponed upon the prisoner's request. Astashin asked the court to give him time to go to Moscow from a prison colony in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in eastern Siberia to meet with his lawyer and to read the case materials. 

Astashin also asked the court to allow him to attend the hearings.

According to the court materials, a group of eight Muscovites headed by Astashin, a student who was also known as Spider, established a terrorist organization that cooperated with the movement against illegal immigration during certain stages of its activity. 

The investigation maintains that they committed eight terrorist attacks against law enforcement authorities and Caucasus natives.

In accordance with the case materials, the defendants participated in a series of explosions and acts of arson, including at police stations and at a Federal Security Service (FSB) reception room.

The cassation court has reduced the sentences of Andrei Markhai (10 years) and Astashin's girlfriend Ksenia Povazhnaya (8 years) to four years and the sentence passed on Maxim Ivanov from 10 to 8 years.

The court upheld the sentences passed on the other members of the group, including Yaroslav Rudny, who was sentenced to six years in prison although the prosecutors asked for a suspended sentence, and Igor Zaitsev, who received a four-year suspended sentence and three years' probation.