Russian skinheads sentenced to life for racial killings

[News_Editor]

Russian skinheads sentenced to life for racial killings

2011-07-12 08:28:30 GMT+7 (ICT)

MOSCOW (BNO NEWS) -- The leader of a Russian nationalist group and five other members were sentenced to life in prison on Monday for dozens of ethnically motivated murders.

RIA Novosti reported that the Moscow District Military Court sentenced Lev Molotkov, the leader of the National Socialist Society (NSS) group, and another five defendants to life in prison for 27 ethnically motivated murders and an attempt to kill a Federal Security Service official. Four of the defendants, including the leader, denied all the charges, saying they were forced to confess "under torture and moral pressure."

The defendants were smiling as the judge read the verdict, but their relatives bombarded the judge and prosecutors with obscenities. The closed-door hearings, which started in April 2010, are being carried out in the military court since one of the defendants is also accused of desertion.

The NSS, which was banned in February 2010, was established in 2004 and organized combat training and published a newspaper advocating national socialist ideology.

Russia has seen a wave of racially motivated crimes since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Routine attacks by skinheads and gangs of youths on foreigners and people with non-Slavic features are common in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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