Arson of an Armenian boy in Kostroma

On April 18, 2004, Karlen Simonyan, an ethnic Armenian, was attacked in Kostroma. Several young people poured gasoline on an 11-year-old boy and set him on fire. The adults, who arrived in time, managed to put out the burning clothes, and the child received only slight burns.

Initially, the victim said that he was set on fire by "some guys who look like skinheads . "

On the fact of the attempted murder of an Armenian boy, public organizations of Armenia on April 23, 2004 sent an open letter to the Russian Embassy in Yerevan and the Armenian Foreign Ministry with a sharp condemnation of cases of manifestation of chauvinism in Russia.

Sergey Vandyshev, the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Factory District Department of Internal Affairs, stated that there was no crime motivated by interethnic hatred. “ At first, the children told their parents a terrible story about skinheads, but now they say that they themselves played with gasoline .

The militiamen, investigating the circumstances of this incident, also stated that " "skinheads have nothing to do with it .

After these statements, the boy's father, Arshaluys Simonyan, also abandoned the nationalist version: "We still managed to find out that everything was completely different. Indeed, it was not skinheads who set it on fire, but guys living 500-600 meters from our house. They forcibly took our boys to an abandoned house nearby. There is a hole near it. They pushed Karlen into it, sprinkled him with gasoline and gave him a lighter. "Now set yourself on fire!" When the fire was put out, these guys told Karlen and Andrey that if they don't want trouble, they should tell their parents that they were attacked by skinheads, which is why they told us about skinheads for the first few days.

Sources

• Kostroma skinheads set fire to an Armenian teenager // IA REGNUM. April 22, 2004
• In Kostroma, an 11-year-old Armenian boy was doused with gasoline and set on fire // News. April 24, 2004