Norway sends Russian fighting champ home to face criminal charges

Norway deported to Russia on Friday a Russian former fighting-without-rules world champion who is charged with armed robbery, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said.

Vyacheslav Datsik, 33, who goes by the nickname “Ginger Tarzan,” was detained with a loaded handgun after seeking asylum an Oslo immigration office on September 21. In late December, a Norwegian court sentenced him to eight months behind bars for illegally carrying a handgun.

“Today, Vyacheslav Datsik was deported to Russia for prosecution for a crime committed on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Prosecutor General’s Office spokeswoman Marina Gridneva said on Friday.

Datsik was arrested in Russia in 2007 and accused of a series of robberies of cell phone shops in St. Petersburg. Russian psychiatrists declared him schizophrenic, absolving him of criminal responsibility for the robberies.

He was transferred to a clinic for the mentally ill to receive compulsory treatment but escaped, turning up in Norway a month later.

Datsik fought extradition to Russia, arguing that he would be likely to face torture in a Russian prison.

He said prisoners “don’t live long” in Russian jails and told Russian television that Norwegian jails were a “piece of cake” and that “food here is just like in a restaurant.”

His lawyer, Fridthof Feydt, said in February that if the appeal against extradition failed in Norway, they could take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Datsik is also reported to be a member of the ultranationalist movement, Slavic Union, which has been banned in Russia but reportedly opened an office in Norway. He has stated that he is “not a Nazi, just racist.”

MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti)

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