MOSNEWS, Russia
June 10 2006

2 Police Officers Charged in Attack on Tajik Students in Russian
Capital

Two police officers were detained, as prosecutors in Moscow
continued their investigation of the alleged involvement of several
policemen in the beating of Tajik students at a university hostel in
the Russian capital, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

`A second suspect in the assault has been detained,’ an official at
the Moscow City Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday but refused to
elaborate. Earlier, prosecutors said that the first police officer
would be charged with robbery and hooliganism.

The attack took place on Wednesday evening. `At approximately 20:00,
a man knocked on the door of a room at the student dormitory,’
prosecutor’s officer spokesman Sergei Marchenko told journalists on
Friday. `A university student – a citizen of Tajikistan – opened the
door. The visitor showed an official identification card and
introduced himself as a policeman… After him, about six people
barged into the room and began beating six Tajik university students
who were in the room using a tire wrench, belts, and their feet.’

According to Russian media reports, the purported police officers
also took the students’ money and mobile phones and warned them to
keep quiet. At least one of the students was reported hospitalized.
Later the district police chief apologized for the incident and
pledged that all those involved will be punished, the Ekho Moskvy
radio station reported. Other reports, however, quoted an
unidentified police spokesman as saying the police had simply
intervened in a fight among the students.

The assault is the latest in a series of attacks on foreigners in
Moscow. In a murder that shocked the country, Vagan Abramyants, a
17-year-old Armenian student at the State University of Management,
was stabbed to death on the platform of Pushkinskaya metro station in
central Moscow at about 5 p.m. April 22.

Prosecutors said these crimes were not being considered as racially
motivated, RIA said.