Russian Ombudsman Condemns Hate Crimes

Lukin was commenting on the attacks by skinheads in Moscow on April 1 on the culture minister of Kabardino-Balkaria, Zaur Tutov, and on April 3 on NTV journalist Elkhan Mirzoyev, who is from the North Caucasus.

Tutov was attacked by 15-20 men, who, he said, shouted racist slogans. Mirzoyev was beaten up in a central Moscow metro station by a gang of men and women who told him he had no place in Russia.

Lukin praised the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office for its April 3 decision to order Moscow prosecutors to reclassify the attack on Tutov, labeling it as a hate crime rather than hooliganism.

Moscow prosecutors had initially said there was no evidence to suggest the attack was racially motivated.

There has been a surge in racially motivated attacks in Russia in recent years, many of them directed against people from the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Critics of Russia's law-enforcement agencies say they often treat racially motivated attacks as random violence and that this is encouraging a feeling of impunity among extremist groups.

(Interfax, AFP, AP)