KILLERS OF ARMENIAN CITIZEN CONVICTED

ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
March 12, 2007 Monday

The verdict came into force against seven residents of the Moscow
region, who are accused of the murder of an Armenian citizen out of
ethnic hatred in the commuter train in the Moscow region.

The murder was committed late in the evening on August 9, 2005.

According to investigators, six residents of the Odintsovo district
aged from 19 to 28, including three students of higher and secondary
educational establishments in Moscow, who have radical nationalistic
views, "agreed in advance about joint attacks on people of the
non-Slavic nationality."

They decided to look for a victim in commuter trains of the Belorussky
railway line and video record the scene of beating in order to sell
it later. For two hours they came from train to train, looking for
people with the non-Slavic appearance, until they found Armenian
citizen Samvel Tadevosian.

"Attacking the victim young nationalists started beating him with
legs, hands, metal chain, recording the beating on a digital photo
camera. They seized from Tadevosian a mobile phone, money and
documents, hit him several times in the head and neck with a sharp
piece of the bottle, and the victim died on the spot," a source in
the Moscow regional prosecutor’s office emphasized.

According to investigators, on the same night another two people
fell their victims in commuter trains, including a lieutenant-colonel
of police, from whom the young criminals stole money, documents and
other valuables.

The Moscow Regional Court found the six defendants guilty of murder
and the premeditated moderate damage to health, committed by a group
of people under the preliminary collusion out of ethnic hatred,
as well as of banditry, robbery and stealing of the passport.

The Russian Supreme Court heard the appeal against the verdict and
upheld it. Defendants Maxim and Alexei Osipovs, Vladimir Maluntsev
were sentenced to 11.5, 6.5 and 4.5 years in a general regime prison,
respectively.

Another three defendants, who committed the crimes being adolescents,
were sentenced to 9.5, 9 and 4.5 years in a general regime colony.

The seventh defendant Anton Palamarchuk was sentenced to two years
in an open prison.