MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti) – Five men have been found guilty of taking part in ethnic clashes in Moscow last December over the shooting of a football fan.
Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court ruled the men, including three activists of the opposition Other Russia movement, called for mass disturbances and caused bodily harm to police during a rally on December 11, 2010.
The rally, to mark the fatal shooting of Spartak Moscow fan Yegor Sviridov, turned violent after 5,000 football fans and nationalists went on a rampage and called for the death of Russia’s migrant population.
President Dmitry Medvedev appealed for ethnic calm, saying race hate threatened “the very stability of the state.”
Earlier on Friday, Aslan Cherkesov, from the Kabardino-Balkaria republic in the North Caucasus region, was jailed for 20 years for murdering Sviridov.