MYTISHCHI NEO-NAZIS ADMIT TO SERIES OF MURDERS, ASSAULTS

Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, DC
May 17 2007

Three 16-year-old neo-Nazis from the Moscow suburb of Mytishchi have
admitted to five murders and assaults after turning themselves in
to police, according to a May 16, 2007 report in the national daily
Moskovsky Komsomolets. As the paper originally reported on April 24,
the youths turned themselves in after finding out that investigators
had determined their identities as the prime suspects in the murder
earlier that month of a Krygyz man. Police at the time announced
that the three suspects may be behind a series of other murders
and assaults.

According to the latest article, the suspects have confessed to the
following additional crimes. In late February, they began to comb
the streets of Mytishchi and the suburban trains connecting it and
other suburbs to Moscow, searching for non-Russians to kill. Their
first victim, a citizen of Tajikistan, was beaten almost to death by
the gang, who attacked him with an axe, a hammer, and bottles. This
same MO was repeated on a suburban train shortly afterwards, when
screaming the neo-Nazi slogan "Glory to Russia!", the youths attacked
two Tajik men, again nearly killing them.

On March 12, the youths spent several hours wandering the streets
without successfully finding their victim. They were resting on a
park bench when a dark-skinned man walked by. Thinking he was from
the Caucasus, the youths beat him to death (it turned out that he
was an ethnic Russian).

In early April, the youths attacked an Armenian couple, beating
the husband and stabbing the wife. Fortunately, both survived. The
final act of violence that the youths are currently accused of is
the mid-April murder of a Kyrgyz man.

Prosecutors told Moskovsky Komsomolets that other attacks may yet be
attributed to the youths, and that, in view of their youth and the
fact that they turned themselves in, the murderous gang are facing
at most ten years in prison if they are convicted.