EXTREMIST GANG IN RUSSIA DISMANTLED
New York Times
Indianapolis Star,IN
May 25 2006
Officials say arrests bring end to group accused of a series of
racially motivated killings
MOSCOW — The authorities in St. Petersburg announced Wednesday that
they had broken up an extremist group that had shocked Russia with a
string of racially motivated killings, including that of an African
student in April and of an expert on hate crimes nearly two years ago.
The authorities said they had recently arrested five members of the
loosely organized group. Two others appeared to have been arrested
earlier on separate charges, while an eighth was fatally shot as police
tried to arrest him May 18. The police seized weapons, explosives
and neo-Nazi literature in raids of the gang members’ apartments,
the authorities said.
Though charges have not been filed, the case amounted to a rare
judicial success in Russia’s fight against a deadly wave of racism
that has resulted in at least 48 killings across Russia in the past
18 months.
St. Petersburg’s prosecutor, Sergei P. Zaitsev, said the seven
young men in custody were members of a small extremist group with no
known name.
The group’s members are accused of killing Lamzar Samba, a 28-year-old
student from Senegal, who was shot in the neck as he left a nightclub
April 7.
Zaitsev accused the group of killing an Armenian and a Korean, as
well as two of its own members. He said the group was also involved
in the killing of Nikolai M. Girenko, a Russian anthropologist who
became an expert on neo-Nazis, skinheads and other extremist movements.