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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Top Russian judge 'assassinated in revenge attack' |
| 2010-04-12 |
| A senior Russian judge who presided over the high-profile trial of a gang of racist killers was assassinated in Moscow today. Eduard Chuvashov was shot in the stairwell of his central Moscow home as he was leaving for work. Police said that they suspected that he had been killed by ultranationalists in a revenge attack for his work at Moscow City Court. Mr Chuvashov, 47, was hit three times in a contract-style killing and died at the scene from gunshot wounds to the head and chest, the Investigations Committee of the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office said in a statement. The judge dealt with the trials of members of extremist organisations and had jailed nine members of a Russian fascist group, the White Wolves, in February for the murders of migrant workers from Central Asia. The skinhead gang, mostly teenagers, were sentenced to between 6 and 23 years for their parts in stabbing and beating to death 11 people. Prosecutors said that the group, which had formed two years earlier on Adolf Hitler's birthday, had filmed their attacks on mobile phones and uploaded them to Slavic nationalist websites. Mr Chuvashov also jailed three ultranationalists last week for racially-motivated murders, Anna Usacheva, a spokeswoman for the Moscow court, told Ekho Moskvy radio. Threats against him had been posted on several radical websites after both trials, said Galina Kozhevnikova, of the Sova Centre, a rights group that monitors racist crimes. “They published his picture and extracts of audio tapes from court cases, profiling him as a danger to all Russians,' she said. Sova said that 306 people were hurt and 60 killed in hate crimes in Russia last year. Video from surveillance cameras in the building showed that the gunman was a man of Slavic appearance aged between 25 and 30, dressed in a black shirt and hat and blue jeans, a police source told Ria Novosti news agency. The judge had been offered protection by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in relation to the threats but had refused to accept a bodyguard, Interfax news reported. |
| Posted by:tipper |