Russian nationalist backtracks on his confession to 37 murders

A teenage Russian ultra-nationalist who earlier confessed to killing 37 people has withdrawn his testimony, despite substantial proof of guilt, a popular Russian daily said Thursday.

Vremya Novostei said that although Artur Ryno, aged 17, has repudiated his testimony, his involvement in more than 20 killings has been proven. Ryno was detained in mid-April on suspicion of stabbing an Armenian national to death in Moscow.

The newspaper earlier quoted Ryno telling investigators that: "since school I have hated people from the Caucasus who come to the capital and oppress Russians." The teenager "realized that the city must be cleansed."

The ultra-nationalist said he and his friend Pavel Skachevsky, aged 18, attacked and killed dark-skinned people in Moscow`s suburbs. They did not confess to murdering the Armenian national, Karen Abramyan, until a videotape from surveillance cameras installed at the entrance to the building where Abramyan lived was shown to them.

Prosecutors earlier said Ryno and Skachevsky were detained after an eyewitness called police and said the two men, who stabbed Abramyan 20 times, had escaped in a streetcar. Police stopped the streetcar and arrested the two youths, who were carrying a knife and whose clothes were covered in blood.

A police source said: "At first we doubted whether what Ryno said was true - he mentioned too many details and boasted about what he had done, and the dates and crime scenes named were not precise. But the investigations we have carried out confirm that everything he said is true." However, Ryno`s accomplice, Skachevsky has denied attacking anyone.

Vremya Novostei wrote in May that the teenagers carried out their first killing on August 21, 2006, which coincided with an explosion carried out by white extremists at Moscow`s Cherkizovsky market, where many traders from the North Caucasus region, former Central Asian Soviet republics, as well as Vietnam and China worked. The explosion left 11 people dead and at least 49 injured.

"We were strolling, I noticed a brawl between our guys, about five or six, and an Asian," Ryno said. "I flew to their assistance. I pulled out a knife and stabbed the non-Russian several times."

Ryno said that when he and his accomplice attacked the non-whites, bystanders did not interfere, preferring to leave the crime scene as quickly as possible.

Routine attacks by skinheads and young gangs on foreigners and people with non-Slavic features have been reported across Russia in recent years. But authorities have been generally reluctant to treat the attacks as race-hate crimes, portraying them instead as acts of hooliganism.

sections: Society, Accidents