Skinheads have no mercy

Five teenagers were convicted of murder and inciting national hatred in Surgut

Yesterday, the court of the city of Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, sentenced five skinheads accused of three murders and inciting hatred. Young people, united by the idea of ​​white supremacy and intolerance towards representatives of Caucasian nationalities, received eight and a half to nine years in prison. According to some reports, since the beginning of this year, eight people have died at the hands of skinheads and more than a hundred have been injured. However, court sentences are becoming increasingly harsh. If previously skinheads were regarded as ordinary hooligans, now they are increasingly accused of inciting national hatred and enmity and are sentenced to long terms.

A group of skinheads was formed in Surgut at the end of 2003. Then it consisted of about 20 people - young guys, many of whom had not yet turned 18, united by the idea of ​​​​white supremacy. The ideological fighters declared natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia their “enemies.” Gathering in groups, they carried out so-called “raids” on the streets of Surgut, looking for representatives of those same “lower” races. The first victim of the skinheads was a 36-year-old citizen of Azerbaijan. On December 30, 2003, he was attacked by twelve people armed with pieces of rebar. The man was knocked down and beaten to death. According to the conclusion of the forensic examination, the victim of the thugs had an open head injury and multiple bruises to vital organs. Of the twelve people who participated in the brutal murder, the investigation was able to identify only five: Ivan Polovinkin, Alexei Tereshchenko, Anton Plakhatnyuk, Andrei Krasnov and Grigory Baronenko. Skinheads then committed two more murders within five days of each other in February last year, of two Tajik citizens. The scenarios in which the events unfolded are very similar to the first - a group of guys armed with rebar, baseball bats and knives attack a lone passerby. The first of the men tried to escape from his pursuers, but he was stopped by a blow to the head from the reinforcement. The second one was not given a chance to escape - they surrounded him at a bus stop and also beat him to death. The last episode of this case, and the description of the actions of these five alone took up nine volumes of the criminal case, is a fight staged by skinheads on September 23 last year. Having provoked a scuffle with Caucasians in the street, they began to beat innocent guys, shouting: “Heil Hitler, sieg heil!” Only the intervention of passers-by saved the victims from the massacre. As the state prosecutor of the Surgut prosecutor's office, Tamila Amrakhova, told a Vremya Novostei correspondent, during a search in the defendants' apartments, leaflets and printed materials of a nationalist nature, images of Hitler, and fascist symbols were found. Polovinkin, Tereshchenko, Plakhatnyuk, Krasnov and Baronenko were accused of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm, negligently resulting in the death of the victim, and of inciting national hatred and enmity. Since all five were minors during the investigation and actively cooperated with investigators, the prosecutor's office requested only ten years in prison for each, although in any other case they would have faced much longer sentences. At the trial, the accused only partially admitted their guilt - they really beat people, but did not want to kill anyone. However, the sentence was harsh. Polovinkin and Tereshchenko received nine years, and Plakhatnyuk, Krasnov and Baronenko received eight and a half years in prison. Judge Alexander Okhrimenko told Vremya Novostei that the lawyers demanded that all five be found innocent. “It seems to me that the defense will exercise its right to retrial,” he said.

Mikhail VIUGIN, Ekaterinburg, Eduard LOMOVTSEV