ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
July 5, 2005 Tuesday 12:51 PM Eastern Time
Extremist youth grouping gets on trial in Petersburg court
By Julia Andreyeva
St PETERSBURG, July 5 – A trial over members of a youth grouping
bearing an English name of the Mad Crowd has begun in the City court
of St Petersburg.
The Mad Crowd guys are accused of attacks on foreigners out of the
motives of ethnic intolerance.
The court is hearing the case of six youngsters aged from 17 to 20
years old. Investigation has proved their involvement in five attacks
that victimized seven people, including citizens of China, Armenia
and Azerbaijan.
Law enforcers are charging the six activists of the Mad Crowd with
offenses falling under Article 217 of the Russian Criminal Code that
stipulates punishment for acts of ethnic strife.
One of the youngsters is also accused of planning a murder, and he is
kept in custody while five others are free on written recognizance
not to leave the city.
The Mad Crowd’s leader, a 20 year-old man, and his closest assistant
have been placed on an international wanted list.
“The grouping was set up in 2002, initially as a group of football
fans aiming to organize riots,” a law enforcement source said in an
interview with Itar-Tass.
“It was later joined by youngsters from an outlawed nationalistic
youth grouping called Schultz’88, some members of which had already
stood court trials, and the Mad Crowd got totally different
objectives then,” the source said.
All the attacks on foreigners were carefully planned, and the
extremists would sometimes invite spectators – the teenagers whom
they later planned to invite to the Mad Crowd.
Last October, the Prosecutor’s Office merged several criminal cases
into one and investigated them as crimes committed by an organized
grouping.
Investigators confiscated printed literature during searches, but
they did not manage to establish the printing houses where it
originated from or the people who might have financed the printing.