RIA Novosti, Russia
June 10 2006

Second police officer detained in Tajik students assault case
12:56 | 10/ 06/ 2006

MOSCOW, June 10 (RIA Novosti) – A second police officer has been
detained in connection with the beating of six Tajik students at a
Moscow university dormitory, prosecutors said Saturday.

The students from the former Soviet republic in Central Asia were
beaten and robbed Wednesday evening in a dormitory of the State
University of Management by a group led by a police officer.

“A second suspect in the assault has been detained,” an official at
the Moscow City Prosecutor’s Office said without giving any more
details.

Prosecutors said earlier that the first police officer, 27, would be
charged with robbery and hooliganism, and that an investigation had
been launched to catch his accomplices. The case is being overseen
personally by Moscow’s chief prosecutor.

The attack took place at around 8 p.m. Moscow time (4 p.m. GMT)
Wednesday, when a man dressed in civilian clothes knocked on the door
of a student room at the dormitory in southeast Moscow saying he was
a police officer. When a student opened the door, six more men in
plainclothes burst in.

“They beat the students with an iron wrench and belts, and kicked
them,” prosecutors said. “One of the students dropped his mobile
phone, and the assailants grabbed it and left.”

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.