RIA Novosti, Russia
May 28 2007
Young Russian nationalist confesses to killing 37
14:40 | 28/ 05/ 2007
MOSCOW, May 28 (RIA Novosti) – A young nationalist suspected of
killing an Armenian businessman confessed to killing 37 people
together with his friend, a popular Russian daily said Monday.
Vremya Novostei reported that Artur Ryno, a student at an icon
painting school, detained in mid-April on suspicion of killing Karen
Abramyan, an Armenian, told investigators that he has "since school
hated people from the Caucasus who come to Moscow, unite and oppress
Russians," and added that he suddenly realized "the city needed to be
cleaned."
Ryno said he and his friend Pavel Skachevsky, both aged 18, attacked
and killed dark-skinned people in Moscow’s suburbs. They did not
confess to the Armenian’s murder until a videotape from surveillance
cameras installed at the building’s entrance where Abramyan lived was
shown to them.
Prosecutors said Ryno and Skachevsky were detained after an
eyewitness called the police and said the two people who stabbed
Abramyan 20 times escaped in a streetcar. Police stopped the
streetcar and arrested the two students whose clothes and a knife
found on them were covered in blood.
A police source said: "At first we doubted whether what Ryno said was
true – he mentioned too many details and boasted about what he had
done, but at the same time the dates and crime scenes named were not
precise. But the investigations we have carried out confirm that
everything he says is true." However, Ryno’s accomplice, Skachevsky
has denied attacking anyone.
Vremya Novostei wrote that the teenagers carried out their first
killing August 21, 2006, which coincided with an explosion carried
out by skinheads at Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market, where many traders
from the North Caucasus region, former Central Asian Soviet
republics, as well as Vietnam and China worked. The explosion left 11
people dead and at least 49 injured.
Ryno said when they were attacking people, bystanders did not
interfere, preferring to leave the crime scene as quickly as
possible.
Routine attacks by skinheads and young gangs on foreigners and people
with non-Slavic features have been reported across Russia in recent
years. But authorities have been generally reluctant to treat the
attacks as race-hate crimes, portraying them instead as acts of
hooliganism.