FOUR SKINHEADS GET SUSPENDED SENTENCES FOR BEATING UP ROMAS, ARMENIANS IN RIGA

Baltic News Service
February 17, 2009 Tuesday 3:05 PM EET

The Riga Regional Court on Tuesday handed down suspended jail sentences
to four young skinheads charged with beating up two Roma girls and
two adult Armenians in Riga two years ago.

The four youngsters who were tried for inciting national, ethnic
and racial hatred involving violence and threats in a group, pleaded
guilty to the charges.

The four accused — Aleseks Grisanovics, Artjoms Gusejinovs, Sergejs
Savins and Anatolijs Cvetkovs — each received the punishment demanded
by the prosecutor, i.e., a suspended five-year jail sentence and a
three-year probation term.

They will also have to pay compensations to the two Roma girls —
12,000 lats (EUR 17,000) to one of the girls and 8,000 lats to
the other.

The prosecutor’s office press service said that the 19-22 years old
youths have been accused of incitement of racial hatred if it is
related with violence or threat and done in a group of persons. Such
a crime carries a jail term of ten years.

The State Police in cooperation with the Security Police in February
detained a group of skinheads. The investigation showed that in the
fall of 2007 they assaulted two 14-15 years old Roma girls in Riga
due to racial motives.

According to the testimony of the mother of one of the girls at the
integration minister’s secretariat, the girls were heading to a shop,
when they met youths looking like skinheads at the tram stop. When
they returned from the shop, the youths seen at the tram stop attacked
them, kicked them into their faces and used metal objects to beat
them. Then the youths ran away.

Similar beatings took place in February this year, when the youths
with the shouts "beat the blacks" assaulted two Armenians.

In both cases assaults had been done due to racial motives.

The Security Police initially defined the crime against the girls
as hooliganism. Latvian Ombudsman’s Office claimed that the girls
were battered for their ethnic origin. Relatives of the victims also
reproached the police for passivity, not detaining the assaulters
immediately.