TEENAGER CONFESSES TO KILLING 37
Moscow News (Russia)
June 1, 2007
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) – A young nationalist suspected ofkilling an
Armenian businessman confessed to killing, together withhis friend,
37 other people, a popular Russian daily reportedMonday.
Vremya Novostei reported that Artur Ryno, a student at an iconpainting
school, detained in mid-April on suspicion of killingKaren Abramyan,
an Armenian, told investigators that he has "sinceschool hated people
from the Caucasus who come to Moscow, unite andoppress Russians," and
added that he suddenly realized "the cityneeded to be cleaned." Ryno
said he and his friend PavelSkachevsky, both aged 18, attacked and
killed dark-skinned peoplein Moscow’s suburbs.
They did not confess to Abramyan’s murderuntil a videotape from
surveillance cameras installed at thebuilding’s entrance where the
victim lived was shown to them.Prosecutors said Ryno and Skachevsky
were detained after aneyewitness called the police and said the two
people who stabbedAbramyan 20 times escaped in a streetcar. Police
stopped thestreetcar and arrested the two students whose clothes and
a knifefound on them were covered in blood. A police source said:
"At firstwe doubted whether what Ryno said was true – he mentioned
too manydetails and boasted about what he had done, but at the
same time thedates and crime scenes named were not precise. But the
investigationswe have carried out confirm that everything he says is
true." However,Ryno’s alleged accomplice has denied attacking anyone.
VremyaNovostei wrote that the teenagers carried out their first
killingAugust 21, 2006, which coincided with an explosion carried
out byskinheads at Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market, where many traders
fromthe North Caucasus region, former Central Asian Soviet republics,as
well as Vietnam and China worked. The explosion left 11 peopledead
and at least 49 injured. Ryno said when they were attackingpeople,
bystanders did not interfere, preferring to leave the crimescene as
quickly as possible. Routine attacks by skinheads and younggangs on
foreigners and people with non-Slavic features have beenreported
across Russia in recent years. But authorities have beengenerally
reluctant to treat the attacks as race-hate crimes,portraying them
instead as acts of hooliganism.