CITY POLICE ZERO IN ON ‘ETHNIC GANGS’
by Carl Schreck, Staff Writer
The Moscow Times
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
Moscow police are preparing for a citywide crackdown on so-called
ethnic gangs after two policemen were shot dead by what prosecutors
described as members of a Georgian crime group.
Police will stake out known hangouts of ethnic gangs until the
killers of police officers Andrei Ashurkov and Sergei Rebrikov,
who were gunned down early Friday in southern Moscow, are found,
a police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity customary
when discussing police operations, said Tuesday.
“Ethnic gangs” is an umbrella term that generally refers to organized
crime groups from the Caucasus.
Ashurkov and Rebrikov responded to a call from residents of an
apartment building on Ulitsa Kirovogradskaya who said they heard cries
for help from the apartment of an Armenian businessman and his family,
police said.
Ashurkov and Rebrikov walked into a hail of automatic gunfire upon
entering the apartment at around 7:30 a.m., and both died at the
scene, City Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Sergei Marchenko said. Six
suspects wearing tracksuits and black leather jackets fled the scene,
he said. No suspects have been detained.
Rebrikov, 39, is survived by a wife and daughter. Ashurkov was 28.
Following a funeral for the two officers Tuesday, deputy police chief
Vladimir Chugunov said Moscow police were “fighting an uncompromising
battle and even a war against bandits.”
“I’m confident that the killers will be identified and found,”
Chugunov said, RIA-Novosti reported. “I offer them to come in and
give themselves up.”
The Mayor’s Office emphasized the ethic background of the victims.
Spokesman Sergei Tsoi said the “ethnic Russian police officers,
who died heroically” and “acted professionally in defending an
Armenian family,” would be awarded state honors posthumously,
Interfax reported. Authorities closely track and publicize statistical
evaluations of crimes committed by foreigners, primarily from other
former Soviet republics. These statistics are cited by some groups
to justify anti-immigration policies.

RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS INCITING RACIST VIOLENCE
by Chris Stephen in Moscow
The Irish Times
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
RUSSIA: Russia has seen a second weekend of racist violence unleashed
by skinhead gangs against foreigners, leaving five people wounded.
Three Syrians, a Cameroonian and a Turkish man were beaten in separate
attacks in the northern city of St Petersburg, wrapping up a bloody
month of racist violence.
It comes with police hunting a gang of skinheads who stabbed a
17-year-old Armenian to death in Moscow city centre a week ago.
The skinheads chased him along a platform of one of Moscow’s busiest
stations, knifed him and slashed his girlfriend across the face,
then leapt on to a tube train to make their escape.
On April 20th, an Indian student was stabbed to death and on April
16th a Russian student, carrying anti-fascist posters, was killed,
also by skinheads.
Other cities have reported similar racist violence, including a Tajik
cook left critically injured after being dragged out of his restaurant
by 20 teenagers and beaten up.
Dozens of graves in Jewish and Muslim cemeteries in towns outside
Moscow have been smashed in recent days.
Human rights monitoring group Sova says 79 people have been injured
by race attacks this year across Russia.
The attacks come as 13 teenagers begin a trial for the murder of a
student from Peru in the southern city of Voronezh last October –
an attack local sources say was carried out in the mistaken belief
that the man was from the Caucuses.
News of the attacks is reported, and glorified, on dozens of neo-Nazi
websites which serve an estimated 20,000 skinheads. Several sites
feature an online Manual of Street Terror, which advises skinheads
on how to corner and beat dark-skinned people.
Aficionados of such sites include 20-year-old Alexander Koptsev,
who was jailed for 13 years in April for attacking seven worshippers
with a Samurai sword in a Moscow synagogue last January.
He told his trial that he shared the belief of the websites that
Russia must be purified.
Despite scores of arrests, the authorities seem unable to quell this
tide of violence – there are always more skinheads ready to fill the
places of those caught.
Diplomats of African and Asian states have circulated warnings
to staff, one official told The Irish Times, after several were
threatened.
Last year two Polish diplomats were beaten up close to their embassy.
Some diplomats are considering moving their families out of Russia.
The attacks come amid a hardening of nationalistic opinions across
Russia. In December, nationalist opposition party Rodina, or
Motherland, was banned from Moscow local elections after screening
an advertisement that compared dark-skinned people with garbage.
One reason advanced for the rise in racism is the war in Chechnya
and terror attacks like the Beslan high school massacre. Another
is ever-growing friction with the West over issues ranging from gas
prices to the Orange Revolution.
President Vladimir Putin has condemned racism, but some think his
government is exploiting the issue to gain votes for the presidential
election in two years’ time, hoping a traumatized will turn to the
Kremlin.
“The spectre of rising nationalism will be used to frighten us into
voting for the incumbent,” said columnist Yulia Latynina in the
Moscow Times.

MOSCOW POLICEMEN DECLARED A WAR ON “ETHNIC GANGS”
by Viktor Tkachyov
SOURCE: Noviye Izvestia, No 76, p.6
Russica Izvestia Information Inc.
RusData Dialine – Russian Press Digest
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
Moscow police are preparing for a citywide crackdown on so-called
ethnic gangs after two policemen were shot dead by what prosecutors
described as members of a Georgian crime group.
Police will stake out known hangouts of ethnic gangs until the
killers of police officers Andrei Ashurkov and Sergei Rebrikov,
who were gunned down early Friday in southern Moscow, are found,
a police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity customary
when discussing police operations, said Tuesday. “Ethnic gangs” is
an umbrella term that generally refers to organized crime groups,
primarily from the Caucasus.
Ashurkov and Rebrikov responded to a call from residents of an
apartment building on Ulitsa Kirovogradskaya who said they heard cries
for help from the apartment of an Armenian businessman and his family,
police said.
Ashurkov and Rebrikov walked into a hail of automatic gunfire upon
entering the apartment at around 7:30 a.m., and both died at the
scene, City Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Sergei Marchenko said. Six
suspects wearing tracksuits and black leather jackets fled the scene,
he said. No suspects have been detained. Rebrikov, 39, is survived
by a wife and daughter. Ashurkov was 28.
Following a funeral for the two officers Tuesday, deputy police chief
Vladimir Chugunov said Moscow police were “fighting an uncompromising
battle and even a war against bandits.”
The Mayor’s Office emphasized the ethic background of the victims.
Spokesman Sergei Tsoi said the “ethnic Russian police officers, who
died heroically” and “acted professionally in defending an Armenian
family,” would be awarded state honors posthumously. Authorities
closely track and publicize statistical evaluations of crimes committed
by foreigners, primarily from other former Soviet republics. These
statistics are cited by some groups to justify anti-immigration
policies.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN PLANE CRASH RELATIVES IN AGONISING WAIT FOR LOVED ONES
Agence France Presse — English
May 3, 2006 Wednesday 4:25 PM GMT
SOCHI, Russia
Relatives of those who died when an Armenian plane crashed into the
Black Sea on Wednesday stared out from the 13th floor of a support
centre set up in a local hotel, wishing the return of those who
disappeared beneath the waves.
Distraught and with rings under her eyes, Larisa Sarkasyan said she
had come with a friend to the centre at the Hotel Moscow in this
Russian resort town, seeking news of her friend’s daughter, a member
of the cabin crew of the plane that crashed earlier in the day with
the loss of all 113 people on board.
“I’d wanted Mara to take something to Moscow for me, but her mother
told me she’d gone to Sochi instead — it was her first time on that
flight,” Larisa said, recalling the last hours before the death of
the 35-year-old crew member.
“Then, in the night, I found out the plane had crashed. I didn’t dare
to call, but asked my husband to,” she said.
Mara’s 12-year-old son had hardly begun to grasp what had happened.
“He’s still hoping his mother will come back,” Larisa said.
Nearby, psychologists were on hand to offer help, while investigators
questioned relatives of the dead, asking them to describe their
perished loved ones to aid the identification process.
Many relatives had come on a special flight from the Armenian capital,
Yerevan, following the crash of the Airbus A320 operated by Armenia’s
Armavia.
Other relatives gathered at the morgue in this southern town that
for most Russians conjures up images of sun, sand and respite from
harsher climes.
But authorities were for the most part staying tight-lipped.
“Mum called 10 minutes before the expected landing time to say
the plane was about to land — she already had a phone signal,”
said Akop Akopyan, who was there with his father and had lost his
mother, Zara, 49. “Ten minutes later the plane had disappeared from
the radar screens.”
Some relatives tried to extract information from policemen guarding
the morgue.
“My friend had a beauty spot on his left cheek. Have you seen him
among the bodies?” one man asked of a policeman on guard.
Two young women managed to get a policeman to show them a photograph of
one of the dead that he had taken using a camera on his mobile phone,
but it was not the body they sought.
“I’m looking for my boyfriend,” explained one of the women.
With fragments from just 49 bodies recovered by Wednesday evening,
some relatives faced a long and agonising wait, whether standing at
the morgue or staring out to sea from the hotel window.

TEARS, ANGER AS RELATIVES MOURN ARMENIAN AIR CRASH VICTIMS
Agence France Presse — English
May 3, 2006 Wednesday 11:17 AM GMT
Stunned and in tears, the distraught families of passengers killed
when an Armenian plane plunged into the Black Sea battled Wednesday
to come to terms with the sudden loss of their loved ones.
In anguished scenes at Yerevan airport, many pinned the blame for the
crash in the early hours on Russian and Armenian aviation officials.
“My little boy was on there. He wasn’t even 25 years old,” said one
tearful mother among those at the Armenian capital’s airport.
Most relatives had heard about the crash from watching television or
after being telephoned by other family members.
Many of the 113 people who died when the Armavia Airbus A320 crashed
as it tried to land near the Russian resort town of Sochi were making
family visits, reflecting the close ties between Russia and its small
Caucasus neighbour.
Russian and Armenian officials have both blamed the crash on poor
weather conditions, saying the pilot aborted a first attempted
landing because of rain and poor visibility before wheeling round
for a second attempt.
A teenage boy, Apet Tatevosyan, appeared barely able to grasp the
news as he waited in the airport hall, as emergency workers and
officials bustled.
“My mum was on the plane. She had gone to visit her sisters who she
hadn’t seen in 15 years,” he said. “We thought she was going to call
— when she didn’t, I was worried and called our relatives in Sochi
who told us the news.”
His disbelief was echoed by Andranig Avetisyan, who also lost a
loved one.
“I lost my niece. She lives in Sochi and had come to visit us in
Yerevan,” Avetisyan said.
A woman who said she her husband had been killed lashed out at the
state of the planes operated by the Armavia national carrier.
“They tell us that these planes are in a good state. And then what?
They call that a good state!,” exclaimed the woman furiously.
The mother who had lost her son blamed Sochi’s Adler airport for
hesitating to let the plane land in heavy rain that was lashing the
coast at the time.
“If the airport had quickly allowed the plane to come in to land,
the disaster would never have happened,” she said, as a white-coated
doctor approached her to administer a sedative.
A team of four doctors was on hand at Yerevan, while Russian
authorities said psychologists were being deployed in Sochi to help
the bereaved when they arrived to help with identification of the dead.
“We have seen hysteria, hypertension, heart attacks. We have also
provided psychological help to those who need it,” said one doctor,
Larisa Arsenyan.
Some 78 of the bereaved left for Sochi early Wednesday. More were
expected to follow on a second flight later in the day.

NO EVIDENCE OF TERRORISM BEHIND ARMENIAN PLANE CRASH: PROSECUTOR
Agence France Presse — English
May 3, 2006 Wednesday 7:06 AM GMT
Investigators have found no evidence that the crash of an Armenian
plane off Russia’s Black Sea coast on Wednesday resulted from
terrorism, Russia’s deputy prosecutor general, Nikolai Shepel, said.
“At this stage we don’t have any information to suggest the possibility
of a terrorist act against the plane,” Shepel was quoted by Interfax
news agency as saying.
Investigators continued to scour the site of the crash about six
kilometres (four miles) from the coast near the resort town of Sochi,
in which 113 people died, Russia’s emergency situations ministry said.
In particular they hoped to find the black box flight recorder that
would provide clues to the crash’s cause.
The Airbus A320 disappeared from radar screens as it made a second
attempt to land at Adler airport near Sochi early Wednesday, after
visibility had been severely reduced by heavy rain.
The prosecutor general’s office said earlier it had launched criminal
proceedings for violation of air traffic procedures leading to loss
of life.

ABRAMYAN OFFERS CONDOLENCES TO FAMILIES OF A-320 PLANE VICTIMS
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 3, 2006 Wednesday 11:06 AM EST
The President of the Union of Armenians of Russia and the World
Armenian Congress, Ara Abramyan, has offered deep condolences to the
next-of-kin of those who died in the A-320 plane crash near Sochi,
southern Russia.
“There were Russian and Armenian citizens on board the plane. It is
a great tragedy for our people. We mourn over this loss,” Abramian
said in a statement.
The two countries’ presidents decided to announce May 5 as the day of
mourning in Russia and Armenia, which would embody solidarity between
our peoples and the readiness to lean on each other’s shoulder and
find consolation in each other in minutes of great distresses and loss,
the statement said.
Abramyan said the Sochi-based Union of Armenians set up a center for
helping relatives of the A-320 victims arriving in the city.
He assured that the two organizations he heads would contribute to
the relief aid fund for the families of the victims, if it was set up.

VETERAN TEST PILOT SUSPECTS HUMAN ERROR CAUSED A320 PLANE’S CRASH
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
Russia’s veteran test pilot, Magomed Tolboyev, has said he tends to
suspect the role of a human error as the chief factor that led to
last night’s crash of an Armenian airliner near the Russian Black
Sea resort city of Sochi.
Tolboyev, currently the president of the Aviatsia aviation corporation,
has said, the planes of this type have what he described as the “curved
image problem,” and the crew might have lost their bearings. At the
same time Tolboyev did not rule out mistakes by both crew and air
traffic controllers.
Interviewed live on the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Tolboyev said
that the plane’s equipment allowed for making a landing in extremely
bad weather.
Air engineer, expert in civil aviation and flight safety Alexei
Komarov, who edits the Aviatransportnoye Obozreniye review, said that
according to statistics, A320 was a very reliable plane. Of the more
than 2,500 liners of this type in operation around the world a mere
twelve have suffered crashes.
The governor of the Krasnodar Region, Alexander Tkachev, tends to
share the human factor version, although in his opinion it is a
preliminary one and requires further confirmation.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry has blamed the Armenian
plane’s crash on bad weather. The Transport Ministry says this version
is most likely.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has ruled out a terrorist
attack. Public Relations Officer Nataliya Vishnyakova has said with
reliance to the investigators’ early findings “a terrorist attack
should be ruled out, because there is no objective evidence pointing
to this.”
There where 113 passengers and crew on board the crashed plane.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry 26 of them had Russian
citizenship. There were some Georgian citizens on board, too. Also
on that plane was Armenia’s former interior minister, chief of the
KGB security service Major-General Usik Arutyunian.
According to the latest reports, the bodies of 46 victims have been
recovered and brought to Sochi. Two have been identified.

BOOK OF CONDOLENCES OPENED AT ARMENIA EMBASSY IN MOSCOW
By Tamara Frolkina
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
A book of condolences was opened at the Armenian Embassy in Moscow
over the air crash near Sochi.
“The book was opened on behalf of all Armenians living in Russia,”
President of the Armenians Union Ara Abramian told Itar-Tass on
Wednesday. “The Union of Russian Armenians is doing its best to help
the families of the crash victims,” Abramian emphasized.
“Relatives are accommodated at the Sochi hotel Moskva, the medical
and psychological aid and the food are provided for them,” he pointed
out. “They will stay in the hotel until all issues concerning the
air crash and its aftermath are settled,” Ara Abramian remarked.
“There are many Russians among those killed in the air crash, as a big
number of Armenians have dual citizenship. It is needed to wait for
the results of the expertise in order to find out what really happened,
as the airplane was said to be in the ideal state,” he indicated.
The A-320 airliner was carrying 113 people, including 26 Russian
citizens. According to the preliminary information, all people aboard
the plane were killed. Former interior minister and chairman of the
Armenian State Security Committee Maj-Gen. Usik Arutyunian is among
those killed. According to the latest reports, the bodies of 39 crash
victims, including one girl, were found.

RUSSIA’S ARMENIANS HELP FAMILIES OF A-320 CRASH VICTIMS
by Tamara Frolkina
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
The Union of Armenians of Russia is lending a helping hand to the
families of those who died in the A-320 plane crash near Sochi,
southern Russia, the Union’s President, Ara Abramyan, told Itar-Tass
on Wednesday.
“The relatives are accommodated at the Moskva hotel in Sochi. There
they will get necessary medical and psychological assistance and
free meals. They will stay there until all issues connected with the
catastrophe and its effects are settled,” he said.
“Among the victims there may be many Russian citizens, as most
Armenians on board of the plane had dual citizenship. It is necessary
to wait for the results of the inquiry into the causes of the crash.
The plane is said to have been in perfect condition,” Abramyan said.
There were 113 passengers on board the A-320, including 26 Russian
citizens.
There were no survivors. Among the victims was Armenia’s former
Interior Minister, chairman of the KGB security service, Major-General
Usik Arutyunyan.
According to the latest data, 39 bodies, including that of a small
girl, have been recovered on the site of the accident.