MOSCOW, September 16 (RAPSI) – Investigators conduct a pre-investigation probe into the death of the leader of the Restruct nationalist movement Maxim Martsinkevich in a Chelyabinsk detention center, the Investigative Committee’s press service reports Wednesday.

Currently, all facts are being established, medico-legal analysis to establish the cause of death is being conducted, according to the statement.

Early on Wednesday, Martsinkevich was found dead in a detention cell. He left a suicide note, a source familiar with the matter told RAPSI.

The man could bargain for release over the next year, his defense said earlier.

Martsinkevich, an infamous Russian nationalist, had a history of clashes with the law. In 2014, he was sentenced to five years in prison for publishing extremist content on the Internet.

He was also convicted of publishing online a video of staging a pretentious execution of a “Tajik drug dealer” and extremist statements and received 3.5 years in prison in two cases taken together.

In December 2018, Moscow’s Babushkinsky District Court gave Martsinkevich 10 years in prison for robbery and hooliganism.  His associate, a leader of the St. Petersburg cell of Restruct movement established by Martsinkevich, Mikhail Shalankevich received a 6-year prison term but was released due to the time served in detention.

Besides Martsinkevich, nine members of the Restruct movement were involved in the case. According to case documents, under pretense of drug interdiction, the group attacked people who sell smoking mixtures in 2013-2014 in Moscow using electro shockers, gas sprayers and metallic pipes, leaving several people traumatized and one person dead.

The case was reconsidered as in May 2018 the Moscow City Court overturned a specific part of the defendant’s 10-year prison term concerning robbery and hooliganism and ordered the case review. The court also mitigated sentence for three associates of Martsinkevich, who were also defendants in the case. Dmitry Sheldyashev and Alexander Shankin were sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in a penal colony while Roman Maksimov received 4 years and 10 months.