MOSCOW, March 15 (RIA Novosti) - Prosecutors in southern Russia have opened a criminal case against a newspaper editor accused of inciting ethnic hatred by publishing nationalist articles, officials said Wednesday.
"Investigators said Igor Mogilev had since December 2005 distributed the newspaper Ya Russky [I Am Russian], which he edited himself, and print editions Tserbery Vlasti [Hounds of Power] and Morituri Departament in the closed town of Znamensk," prosecutors in Astrakhan Region said.
Experts who studied the articles said they incited hatred against non-Slavs. Mogilev has been arrested and is facing charges of inciting ethnic, racial or religious hatred.
Russian and foreign human-rights groups have raised concerns over what they say is the alarming spread of racist and xenophobic attitudes in Russia in recent years.
The latest in a string of attacks on foreigners with non-Slavic features occurred in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don March 9 when a Syrian student was beaten up.
The central Russian city of Voronezh alone has seen as many as seven racially motivated killings over the past six years, including the murder of a Peruvian student in October 2005.
On January 11, 2006, Moscow saw a shocking attack on a synagogue when a 20-year-old man stabbed nine people with a hunting knife.
