Appeal court seeks victim in Kamuoliniai gang case
Saturday 24th October 2026 on 17:30 in
Lithuania
Lithuania’s Court of Appeal will try to contact a missing victim and inform him about proceedings in a case linked to the Kamuoliniai criminal group, LRT reported.
A three-judge panel had planned to begin hearing the criminal case against Gediminas Sabas, who was sentenced to seven years in prison, on Thursday. Neither Sabas nor the victim, Mantas Pečiulis, attended the hearing. The court said it had no record that Pečiulis had been notified.
Prosecutor Zdzislavas Tuliševskis said investigators had also been unable to reach Pečiulis during the trial at first instance, and argued the case could proceed without him. He said Pečiulis had lived abroad and had been contacted by email. Sabas’s lawyer, Ričardas Girdziušas, said there had been correspondence with Pečiulis in another case.
Judge Evaldas Pašilis said it would be a procedural violation not to establish whether Pečiulis could be notified about the hearing in Vilnius. The court decided to try contacting him by email and through his girlfriend’s phone.
In May, Kaunas Regional Court sentenced Sabas to seven years in prison for participating in crimes planned by an organised group, illegally possessing firearms and smuggling them.
According to case records, the events began in 2011 after Pečiulis assaulted a man linked to the Kamuoliniai group during a dispute involving drugs. Prosecutors said the group’s leaders then ordered members to find Pečiulis, who had gone to the Netherlands, and seriously injure him. Their instructions included breaking his arms, shooting his legs and vertebrae, and cutting off an ear.
The court found that group members took firearms and ammunition to the Netherlands, acquired equipment for the attack, watched Pečiulis’s home and planned the assault. On July 7, 2011, he was attacked on Jan Wapstraat in The Hague. The assailants fired at least four shots at close range, causing serious gunshot injuries.
Sabas denied guilt and said he had not travelled to the Netherlands. The court rejected his account, citing testimony from other people questioned in the case and the body of evidence. The proceedings took a long time because of the scale of the organised crime investigation, its international aspects and separate trials. Some group members were tried and sentenced earlier.