Four skinheads were sentenced on Tuesday to prison terms ranging from 2.5 to six years for murdering a Kyrgyz national the day after the 2010 nationalist rally in central Moscow.
On December 11, a 5,000-strong crowd of nationalists and football hooligans clashed with the police following the death of Spartak Moscow soccer fan Yegor Sviridov, who was killed in a brawl between soccer fans and North Caucasus migrants.
The court said that a group of teenagers, inspired by the unrest, “conspired to attack persons of non-Slavic appearance near the Kolomenskoye subway station.” They tried to provoke passers-by, but the majority of potential victims just fled. Then they beat up a Kyrgyz national and stabbed him in the chest.
The young men denied their attacks were ethnically motivated, though investigators impounded nationalist books and leaflets from them.
The court sentenced Ilya Kubrakov, the immediate perpetrator of the murder who was 14 at the time of the attack, to six years in prison. Kubrakov, who initially confessed of the murder, pleaded not guilty in court.
Kubrakov and another underage group member, Mikhail Kuznetsov, will serve their sentences in a juvenile correctional facility. Kuznetsov was sentenced to three years behind bars.
Two other group members were sentenced to 2.6 years in prison.
The fifth suspect, charged only with covering up a crime, has been set free because he was convicted after the statute of limitations expired.
