4 Suspects Cleared in Racist Attack
The Moscow Times, Russia
June 26 2006
By Carl Schreck
Staff Writer
Sergei Smolsky / Itar-Tass
A St. Petersburg jury has cleared four young men in the September
stabbing death of a Congolese student, the second time in four months
that a jury has freed suspects in racially motivated killings.
Last year’s attack was one of dozens against African students and other
dark-skinned people in St. Petersburg, which has gained notoriety as
a hotbed of racist violence.
While St. Petersburg authorities finally appear to be taking the
violence more seriously, the latest verdict shows that ordinary people
do not see racism as a problem, said Desire Deffo, a leader of the
local African Unity group.
"We still have a lot of work to do," he said by telephone Wednesday.
After Tuesday’s verdict, Prosecutor Dmitry Mazurov called the jurors
"simple folk" who were unable to objectively evaluate evidence.
"Evidence for them is a bloody knife with fingerprints on it," Mazurov
said in comments broadcast on Rossia state television late Tuesday.
As evidence, prosecutors had presented the student’s clothes, on
which they said fibers from the suspects’ clothing had been found.
However, the suspected murder weapons — a knife and a rock — remain
missing, and no bloodstains were found on the suspects’ clothes.
Prosecutors plan to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Congolese student Roland Epassak, 29, was attacked by four young men
on the night of Sept. 9 near the building where he lived, prosecutors
said. The attackers struck him on the head with a rock and then
began punching and kicking him. After Epassak fell to the ground,
they continued beating him and stabbed him several times, including
in the throat.
One of the four defendants, Andrei Gerasimov, was accused of stabbing
Epassak at least seven times. The other suspects were Yury Gromov,
Andrei Olenev and Dmitry Orlov. The suspects are 19 to 26 years old.
Epassak died from the stab wounds five days later in a hospital.
Prosecutors initially said the attack was not racially motivated,
angering African and Asian students and prompting about 50 of them
to march in St. Petersburg the day after Epassak died. The attack
was eventually classified as a hate crime.
The suspects were detained in late September, and city prosecutors
later announced they had admitted to killing Epassak.
All four, however, declared their innocence in their July 20 closing
statements to the St. Petersburg City Court. They denied having racist
sentiments and noted that the suspected murder weapons had never been
found, Strana.ru reported. They also pointed out that no blood had
been found on their clothes.
Following the acquittal, around 50 people present in the courtroom
to support the suspects applauded loudly for several minutes, and a
few shouted "Thank you!" and "Way to go!" Interfax reported.
The defendants had faced sentences of up to life in prison if
convicted.
A woman who answered the phone at the Congolese Embassy in Moscow
said no one was available to comment.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko on Wednesday expressed
disappointment with the jury and called the acquittal a "very bad
and incorrect decision for a racist crime."
"I was kept informed during the entire investigation," Matviyenko told
reporters, Interfax reported. "The work was done very professionally,
and the suspects’ guilt was proven."
Matviyenko, echoing the lead prosecutor, accused the jurors of being
poor instruments of justice. "People end up [on a jury] unprepared
from a legal standpoint, and their decisions very often are made on
an emotional level," she said.
Proponents of judicial reform, however, say prosecutors and
investigators often put together slipshod cases and lack the
professionalism needed to fight their cases before juries.
Since 1993, when jury trials were reinstated after a break of more than
seven decades, the acquittal rate has been much higher for defendants
tried by jury than by judges. Last year, every sixth person tried
by a jury was acquitted, while only 3.6 percent of those tried by
judges were cleared, according to statistics provided by the Supreme
Court. In previous years, the difference was even greater.
A St. Petersburg jury in March cleared a young man of murder charges
in the stabbing death of a 9-year-old Tajik girl, finding him guilty
instead of hooliganism.
In May, St. Petersburg police arrested and charged several members
of the Mad Crowd group on charges of inciting teenagers to attack
the girl, Khursheda Sultanova, and her family.
The suspects are also believed to have taken part in the June 2004
fatal shooting of Nikolai Girenko, a sociologist who pioneered a
method for classifying ethnically motivated crimes and had testified
against nationalists in court, as well as the 2003 killing of a
Chinese citizen and a 2003 attack on an Armenian.
Police say the suspects have admitted their guilt.
Nineteen people have died in racially motivated attacks this year,
a group that monitors extremist activity said Wednesday. Another
166 people have suffered injuries in attacks in 22 regions, the Sova
Center said, Ekho Moskvy reported. Most of the attacks took place in
St. Petersburg and Moscow, and they are becoming increasingly vicious,
it said.