Russian Skinhead Gang Jailed for Murder of 20 Migrants

Russia's most sensational skinhead trial ended yesterday when a gang of teenagers who murdered 20 migrant workers and attempted to kill 12 others were given lengthy prison terms.

The gang, which had been led by Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, both students then aged 17, picked on non-Russian workers living in Moscow. The victims were selected randomly and stabbed to death.

Police had no clue about the pair's prolific racist killing spree until April 2007 when the teenagers attacked Karen Abramian, 46, an Armenian businessman, who they stabbed as he entered his Moscow apartment block. Police captured Ryno and Skachevsky as they fled, finding them with blood-soaked clothes and carrying 25cm (10in) knives.

In custody the pair boasted of their numerous victims, claims police treated with skepticism. Later it was established the gang had murdered 20 people, including Tajik labourers, Chinese migrants and a Russian grandmaster of chess.

According to defence lawyers, none of the seven-member gang later expressed much remorse. The members shared ultra-nationalist views, the lawyers added. Ryno had arrived in Moscow in 2006 from Yekaterinburg, and was studying at art college, where he painted orthodox icons. Skachevsky was a high-achieving pupil. Both were members of the Slavic Union, a neo-Nazi organization.

Prosecutors said the gang's two groups, inspired by ideas of "Russian ethnic supremacy" and the "inferiority of non-Slavs", went on a murderous spree, from August 2006 to August the following year. They organized themselves to kill people who came from former Soviet republics in central Asia and the Caucasus regions.

The trial comes at a time when racist violence in Russia is increasing. Sova, an information centre in Moscow, says the number of racist murders for this year stands at 80, compared with 50 in 2004.

Human rights groups said law enforcement agencies were generally reluctant to investigate race crime, preferring to categorize it just with hooliganism. "There is a very widespread xenophobic prejudice in Russian society," said Alexander Verkhovsky, Sova's director. He said there were 2,000-3,000 "young guys" who used violence because of those attitudes.

Ryno and Skachevsky, now 19, were both jailed for 10 years yesterday.

Five other defendants got sentences of six to 20 years and two were acquitted.