The trial of skinheads began in Volgograd

On January 26, 2004, the Volgograd Regional Court held the first court hearing in the case of skinheads, a group of students who beat three Central Asians to death.

Eight defendants were charged with ethnically motivated murder, three with malicious hooliganism. In the period from August 2 to 8 (according to other sources - October), 2002, this group of young people, who considered themselves skinheads, in two districts of Volgograd brutally (with their feet, baseball bats, scraps of metal pipes) beat three people - a citizen of Uzbekistan, Muzafar Kutlimuratov and two citizens of Tajikistan - Inyoniddin Kurbanov and Abduvakhid Sangakov.

Among the defendants are Andrey Bondarev, Evgeny Veld, Evgeny Dudarev, Sergey Zaitsev, Mikhail Kamenev, Evgeny Klimov, Vladimir Kuklyaev, Sergey Lavrov, Alexander Ovcharenko, Vladimir Michukov, Alexander Shcherbakov.

The criminal case was transferred to the regional court on May 30, 2003. However, the hearings were postponed several times for various reasons and did not begin until January 2004.

During the process, the number of defendants in the case decreased: in October 2004, three people were transferred from the category of defendants to witnesses, who had previously been charged with article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - "hooliganism". As the press secretary of the Volgograd Regional Court, Alexander Chernov, explained, "this happened in connection with the decriminalization of the articles under which they were accused" (that is, in connection with the changes made to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation during this period - ed. ).

This is the first case in Russian judicial practice when a skinhead case is tried by a jury. Of the 64 candidates, 12 main and four alternate jurors were selected. The court session was held behind closed doors - such a decision was made by the judges at the request of the lawyers of the juvenile defendants.

Sources

• The first court hearing on the case of skinheads began in the Volgograd Regional Court // IA REGNUM. 2004. January 26
• The fashion has passed, but the process goes on // Russian courier. 2003. 15 September.
• In Volgograd, the number of defendants decreased at the trial in the “skinhead case” // RIA Novosti. 2004. October 6.