Translated material
Skinhead's silence
The nationalist who confessed to the massacres of “non-Russians” recanted his testimony
The scandalous case of a series of murders motivated by national hatred committed over the past year in Moscow has taken an unexpected turn. As Vremya Novostei learned, the other day the main suspect in these wild crimes, 17-year-old Artur Ryno, who had previously voluntarily confessed to 37 attacks on immigrants from Asia and the North Caucasus , suddenly retracted his testimony.Nevertheless, the investigation managed to establish the involvement of a minor fighter “for the purity of the race” in 22 crimes, as a result of which only one person managed to survive. In addition, before refusing to testify, Ryno told the police that he knew other well-known capital nationalists - Sergei Klimuk and Nikolai Korolev (both were detained on charges of organizing an explosion at the Cherkizovsky market in August last year).
As the Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported, Arthur Ryno, a visitor from Yekaterinburg, and his Muscovite friend Pavel Skachevsky were detained in mid-April in hot pursuit after they attacked businessman Karen Abrahamyan near his house on Kedrov Street. After stabbing the man about 20 times, they tried to escape. A witness to the incident noticed that the attackers had boarded the tram and immediately reported this to the arriving policemen. Having given chase, they stopped the tram and detained the young men. According to investigators, all the teenagers’ clothes were stained with blood, as was the knife found on one of them.
During interrogations, Pavel Skachevsky refused to cooperate with the investigation and has still not admitted his guilt. His friend turned out to be more talkative. According to operatives, first Ryno spoke about the murder of Tajik citizen Khairullo Sadykov, committed by him the day before. And then he remembered another 37 attacks he committed motivated by national hatred. The detainee admitted that “since school he has hated Caucasians and Asians who come to the capital and oppress Russians.” According to him, he “realized that it was necessary to clean up the city.” According to Ryno’s initial confessions, he committed his first crime on August 21, 2006 in the area of the Cherkizovsky market, where a few hours later other nationalists would stage an explosion. “We were walking, I noticed a fight between our guys, about 5-6 people, with an Asian guy. I hastened to help. He took out a knife and stabbed the non-Russian with it several times,” Ryno said during interrogation.
“Most of the crimes, according to him, were committed together with his friend Skachevsky, but his other acquaintances also took part in a number of attacks, some of whom he calls fans of the CSKA football club. One of these “friends” was identified and detained. Currently, two more people are under suspicion in this criminal case,” law enforcement officials said.
At first, the skinhead's confession raised doubts among investigators from the prosecutor's office. He spoke in too much detail, savoring the details, about what he had done, but at the same time he inaccurately named the dates and places of the crimes. However, checking this data, the detectives were convinced that everything said was true. “We went with him to places where he showed and told everything. Where he showed, attacks with a knife were indeed recorded at one time. There is an assumption that the inaccuracy in indicating the places where the crime was committed is due to the fact that Ryno is not a Muscovite. We think that he was taken on all these “outings” by a friend who was detained with him,” the police believe. After law enforcement agencies found out the true scale of the criminal activities of Ryno and Skachevsky, their case was transferred from the prosecutor's office of the South-Western Administrative District to the department for the investigation of banditry and murders of the city prosecutor's office.
In addition, Ryno managed to make another sensational statement, which investigators are now checking. “He said that he knew two people accused of the explosion of the Cherkizovsky market - former warrant officer of the capital’s FSB Directorate Sergei Klimuk and the head of the military-patriotic club “Spas” Nikolai Korolev. He committed his first crime shortly before the explosion, nearby. It is possible that this could have been a diversionary maneuver,” the police believe.
However, after all these confessions, the skinhead recently suddenly refused all these testimonies. The investigation of the case will now slow down greatly, since detectives will have to look for evidence and other accomplices in the attacks only on their own. However, according to them, over the past time they have managed to document at least 22 attacks on “non-Russians” out of 37 that the detainee spoke about.