A special unit will be created under the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation to investigate extremist crimes

On March 25, 2008, at a press conference in Moscow, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office, announced that a special unit to investigate extremist crimes would be created in the committee. According to him, the decision to create a special unit is connected with the growth of "extremist" crimes, including crimes motivated by ethnic and racial hatred.

The special unit will investigate "resonant" extremist crimes under Art. 282 (incitement of national hatred or enmity), Art. 282-1 (organization of an extremist community) and Art. 282-2 (organization of the activities of an extremist organization) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

According to the official statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for January-February 2008, 58 such crimes were committed.

Note that Alexander Bastrykin said that "first of all, we need to look at crime among immigrants from the Caucasus . " He acknowledged that extremist youth organizations, of course, exist, as well as anti-fascist movements, "but we need to look at what is happening in our state, why we have survived to this point . " At the same time, Bastrykin recalled the capital's tens of thousands of illegal migrants from the Caucasus and the "official" diaspora of 1 million people and gave his own examples of extremism: the case of undermining the Nevsky Express and the murder of the prosecutor of the Saratov region, in which people from the Caucasus are involved.

Sources

• Kira Latukhina. Bastrykin "lived" to extremism // Vedomosti.Ru. 2008. March 25.