SUSPECTS IN VIOLENT MURDER OF ARMENIAN DETAINED NEAR MOSCOW

RIA Novosti, Russia
March 27 2006

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) – Four teenage suspects in the murder
of an Armenian man aboard a commuter train two weeks ago have been
arrested in the Moscow Region, the police said Monday.

“A thorough search conducted by the police for two weeks has brought
positive results,” a police spokesman said. “Four young people,
residents of Mytishchi in the Moscow Region, have been detained in
connection with the murder.”

Two weeks ago, a group of teenagers stormed a wagon of a local commuter
train and beat up an Armenian-born man and the woman accompanying
him. The man later died from multiple stab wounds.

“During the investigation, police found neo-Nazi literature and
pamphlets inciting racial hatred in the suspects’ homes,” the
spokesman said.

All four suspects have been arrested and charged with premeditated
murder based on inter-ethnic hatred.

This crime is one of the latest in a string of violent attacks
motivated by racism and religious hatred in Russia.

Moscow City Court Monday handed down a 13-year jail term to a man
found guilty of attempted murder in a knife attack at a central Moscow
synagogue earlier this year.

Also on Monday, a court in Western Siberia found a group of skinheads
suspected of committing several racially motivated attacks on migrants
from Central Asian countries guilty of extremism and racial hatred.

Last week, a jury in St. Petersburg cleared one man of the murder
last September of nine-year-old Tajik girl Khursheda Sultonova,
but convicted seven others of hooliganism.

Reports of routine attacks on foreigners with non-Slavic features have
prompted Russian and foreign human rights groups to raise concerns over
the alarming spread of racist and xenophobic attitudes in the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February that a rise in crimes
based on ethnic and racial intolerance was shameful and demanded that
the police take serious measures to improve the situation.