Prosecutors in St. Petersburg have filed hate crimes and murder charges against four neo-Nazi youths who stabbed an Uzbek man to death last year, according to a July 17, 2008 report by the local Fontanka.ru news web site. According to prosecutors, the four suspects, two of whom are under-aged, traveled to the nearby town of Repino in order to find a non-Russian to beat up. After hunting the streets for a few hours, the young extremists gave up, but as they waited for a train back to Petersburg, they spotted 30-year-old Ibragim Parmanov, who had arrived in town a few days before to visit his sister and work as a house cleaner. He tried to flee his assailants, but they caught him, started to beat him, and then the two under-aged youths pulled out knives and stabbed him multiple times. He died of blood loss shortly before paramedics arrived.

Police detained the youths a few days later thanks to eyewitness testimony and footage from a security camera. A search of their apartments allegedly yielded neo-Nazi paraphernalia, and police discovered evidence of visits to neo-Nazi web sites on their computers. Some of the suspects also have neo-Nazi tattoos. Nevertheless, police insist that they do not belong to any neo-Nazi gang. Three have reportedly confessed so far and are free awaiting trial; the one suspect who hasn't confessed is being held in pre-trial detention. They all face charges of murder motivated by ethnic hatred and of actions aimed at the incitement of ethnic hatred.

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