STUDENT ARRESTED OVER MURDER OF ARMENIAN YOUTH IN MOSCOW

Agence France Presse — English
April 24, 2006 Monday 8:06 AM GMT

A 17-year-old student suspected of having stabbed a young Russian of
Armenian origin in the Moscow metro on Saturday has been arrested,
the prosecutor for the Russian capital said Monday.

A spokesman for the prosecutor told Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
the student had confessed to the murder, which happened Saturday
afternoon in the Pushkinskaya underground station in central Moscow.

A group of six or seven youths got off a train and immediately set upon
another group of around 12 people who were standing on the platform.

The victim, a 17-year-old man of Armenian origin, died on the spot
after he was stabbed in the chest.

The prosecutor is not ruling out a motive of racial hatred, Itar-Tass
reported. The suspect is in his final year of secondary school
in Moscow.

Racist attacks are common in Russia, particularly among young people.

But the Russian authorities, reluctant to use the term, often describe
such crimes as “hooliganism”.

They are often carried out by gangs of skinheads and usually target
Asians, Africans and people from the Caucasus — such as Armenians —
or Central Asia.