MOSCOW, July 18 (RAPSI) – Russian prosecutors have filed an appeal against detention of the fire control chief Andrey Bursin as part of a case over the fire in Kemerovo’s Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) shopping mall that left 60 people dead, the Kemerovo Regional Court has told RAPSI.

On July 10, the defendant, who holds the position of the fire control service chief of the Federal Fire-Fighting Service’s regional department’s 1 team, was detained until September 7. His detention was also appealed by his lawyers.

Bursin has been charged with negligence. The fire control service chief has become the eleventh defendant detained in the case. He could face up to 7 years in prison if convicted.

The blaze in the mall occurred on March 25. According to investigators, 60 people including dozens of children were killed by fire. Initially it was reported that 64 people died.

A criminal case has been launched over involuntary manslaughter, violation of fire safety regulations that left more than two persons dead and provisions of services that don’t meet safety requirements.

Investigators believe that Bursin did not organize the firefighting personnel and resources at the site of the tragedy and did not collect information on fire in the building, leading to deaths of people.

Ten defendants were earlier detained in the case. They are: Yulia Bogdanova, CEO of the Kemerovsky Confectionary Combine, a company owning the mall, Tanziliya Komkova, chief of the region’s State Construction Inspection, a formal head of the mall’s owner company Georgy Sobolev; the mall’s manager Nadezhda Suddenok; CEO of the company System Integrator that developed the fire safety system Igor Polozinenko; an employee of the company, who personally installed the fire alarm Alexander Nikitin, a guard who allegedly turned off the emergency notification system when he received a fire signal Sergey Antyushin and fire team commander Sergey Genin, chief of the ministry’s directorate for Kemerovo Grigory Terentyev and ex-director of the ministry’s department for Kemerovo Region Alexander Mamontov.