MOSCOW, March 27 - RAPSI. The Supreme Court has upheld the lower court sentence handed down to the four men convicted of plotting to bomb a high-speed train, RAPSI reports from the courtroom on Wednesday.

The court rejected the appeal filed by the four convicts in the case, who were sentenced to prison terms from 15 to 18 years. They asked the court to for a milder punishment and to clear them of certain charges (in particular, from Article 205 of the Criminal Code "On Terrorism") because, their attorneys said, they had voluntarily abandoned their plans and disposed of the bomb.

The case was heard behind closed doors.

On July 18, 2011, Federal Security Service (FSB) head Alexander Bortnikov reported to then-President Dmitry Medvedev that a major terrorist attack had been averted in the Moscow region, and four suspects had been detained. He said an explosive device, arms, and a map had been seized. It later became known that they had planned to blow up a Sapsan train, a new high-speed train which runs between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod.

The investigators established that in 2011 Islam Khamzhuyev joined a gang which received orders from one of the Caucasus Emirate terrorist network to blow up a railway when the Sapsan was due to pass. Khamzhuyev withhis three accomplices, Fahil Nevlyutov, Mansur Umayev and Mansur Edilbiyev, made the bomb in an apartment they rented in Moscow.

They drove out of town to select a suitable section of the railway to plant the bomb and noted the time when the Sapsan reached it. Khamzhuyev gave the bomb to the other three and ordered them to plant it and set it off with a remote control. However, security agents found the bomb hidden in a park in Moscow and defused it. The four suspects were subsequently arrested.