RIA Novosti, Russia
Nov 24 2006

Same suspects in two race-hate crimes in Russia – lawyer
17:54 | 24/ 11/ 2006

MOSCOW, November 24 (RIA Novosti) – Criminal cases on a market
bombing and an Armenian student’s murder in Moscow have been combined
into a single case, since they involve the same suspects, a lawyer
said Friday.

The student was stabbed in the capital in April, and 11 people were
killed in a market bombing in August.

"The cases have been united, as the same suspects appear in both of
them," Simon Tsaturyan said.

Vagan Abramyants, a 17-year-old student at the Moscow Academy of
Management, was attacked and stabbed to death on the platform of
Pushkinskaya metro station in central Moscow, at about 5 p.m. on
April 22.

On August 21 an explosion rocked the Cherkizovsky market in
northeastern Moscow killing 11 and injuring at least 49 people.

On the day of the bombing, police arrested three students of Moscow
institutes, Ilya Tikhomirov, Oleg Kostyrev and Valery Zhukovtsov. The
police later arrested 25-year-old Nikolai Korolyov.

The bombing suspects confessed to being motivated by race-hate. As
with most markets in Moscow, many traders at the Cherkizovsky market
are from the North Caucasus region and former Central Asian Soviet
republics, as well as China and Vietnam.