High-Profile Crimean Tatar Leader Killed

23 September 2004 -- Prosecutors in Ukraine are investigating the killing of prominent Crimean Tatar leader Server Omerov, who was slain along with his wife in the couple's home late last night or early this morning.

Omerov headed the Crimean Tatar ethnic movement in the early 1990s.

Remzi Iliasov, the deputy head of the ethnic Tatar Assembly, said Omerov was shot and his wife stabbed.

Iliasov would not speculate on whether the killings were politically motivated, but he did say that the situation on the Crimean Peninsula is "tense, with numerous acts of vandalism and authorities' passive unwillingness to solve the situation."

(AP)