RUSSIAN NATIONALIST BACKTRACKS ON HIS CONFESSION TO 37 MURDERS
RIA Novosti, Russia
June 14 2007
MOSCOW, June 14 (RIA Novosti) – A teenage Russian ultra-nationalist who
earlier confessed to killing 37 people has withdrawn his testimony,
despite substantial proof of guilt, a popular Russian daily said
Thursday.
Vremya Novostei said that although Artur Ryno, aged 17, has repudiated
his testimony, his involvement in more than 20 killings has been
proven. Ryno was detained in mid-April on suspicion of stabbing an
Armenian national to death in Moscow.
The newspaper earlier quoted Ryno telling investigators that: "since
school I have hated people from the Caucasus who come to the capital
and oppress Russians." The teenager "realized that the city must
be cleansed."
The ultra-nationalist said he and his friend Pavel Skachevsky, aged
18, attacked and killed dark-skinned people in Moscow’s suburbs. They
did not confess to murdering the Armenian national, Karen Abramyan,
until a videotape from surveillance cameras installed at the entrance
to the building where Abramyan lived was shown to them.
Prosecutors earlier said Ryno and Skachevsky were detained after an
eyewitness called police and said the two men, who stabbed Abramyan
20 times, had escaped in a streetcar. Police stopped the streetcar
and arrested the two youths, who were carrying a knife and whose
clothes 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, and the dates and crime scenes named were not precise. But
the investigations we have carried out confirm that everything he
said is true." However, Ryno’s accomplice, Skachevsky has denied
attacking anyone.
Vremya Novostei wrote in May that the teenagers carried out their
first killing on August 21, 2006, which coincided with an explosion
carried out by white extremists 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.
"We were strolling, I noticed a brawl between our guys, about five or
six, and an Asian," Ryno said. "I flew to their assistance. I pulled
out a knife and stabbed the non-Russian several times."
Ryno said that when he and his accomplice attacked the non-whites,
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.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
