SUSPECT DETAINED IN MOSCOW ATTACK ON TWO ARMENIANS
RIA Novosti, Russia
July 3 2006
MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) – Police in Moscow said Monday they
had detained a suspect in connection with the stabbing of two ethnic
Armenians at a subway station in the Russian capital.
Sergei Marchenko, a representative of the Moscow prosecutor’s office,
said the Saturday afternoon attack on the two men, aged 23 and 26,
was "a result of a conflict with a group of 17- and 18-year-olds."
Police said they had taken a resident of central Russia into custody
in connection with the assault. "The detained 24-year-old resident
of Lipetsk is suspected of attacking two Armenians," a spokesman said.
"The suspect was on the wanted list already."
The spokesman said police was checking another group of people
suspected of involvement in the attack.
"Investigators know their names and other details," he said.
Marchenko said the Moscow subway prosecutors had agreed to launch an
inquiry into hooliganism, a charge often brought against suspects in
assaults and similar incidents.
It is still unclear whether the incident was another attack in a
series of race-hate crimes that have recently rocked the country.
The city of Voronezh in central Russia has seen at least seven
apparently racially motivated killings of non-white foreigners over
the past six years, including the murder of a Peruvian student last
October.
St. Petersburg has been suffering from negative publicity over alleged
neo-Nazi attacks and murders, including the killing of a student from
Senegal in April and the stabbing of a nine-year-old girl of mixed
Russian-African origin in early 2006.
In an effort to combat these extremist and xenophobic trends, Russia
set up a nationwide public movement, Our Russia, in late June. The
movement comprises politicians, entrepreneurs, figures from the arts
world and human rights activists, who will work closely with all of
Russia’s religious and cultural communities.