On January 30, 2007, Russian Supreme Court sustained a verdict to a group of people accused of a murder with a bias motive.

Seven people were accused of beating to death a 52-year old Armenian Samvel Tadevosyan on August 9, 2005, in a local train coming to Moscow. The murder was filmed with a mobile phone camera, and the accused didn't make any secret of the fact that they had intended to sell this video to ultra-rightwing internet sites.

As if destroying the myth of Russian jury being too indulgent towards neo-nazis, the accused refused from being judged by the jury.

On November 9, 2006, the Moscow regional court found two of the attackers, Petr Osipov and Anton Moskovskih, guilty of the murder with a nationalistic motive. Besides, these two and 4 their "brothers-in-arms" were found guilty of infliction of grievous bodily harm with a motive of ethnic enmity (Article 112 of the Criminal Code) and robbery. All of them were sentenced to 2-12 years of imprisonment.

The seventh defendant, the one who filmed the attack, was acquitted.

Both the defense and the Prosecutor's office, not satisfied with the acquittance of the seventh defendant, appealed the verdict.

On January 30, 2007, the Supreme Court partly changed the verdict, softening the sentences of three of the six convicts. The charges which include hate crimes committed with a bias motive were not changed.

According to our data, in 2006 in Russia there were 31 verdicts of conviction concerning hate crimes of violence, including 10 cases involving the murder of 15 people.