Seven Russians sentenced for hate-murders. As investigators probe last week’s stabbing of an African-American exchange student in Russia, authorities sentenced seven young men who murdered 19 people in a series of hate crimes. Their prison terms were handed down Monday amid a dramatic rise in racist assaults, xenophobia and neo-Nazism in Russia, The Associated Press reports. The hate group’s leaders, Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, got 10 years – the maximum possible term since they were minors at the time of the attacks in 2006 and 2007 – and another man was sentenced to 20 years; four others got between six to 12 years, Moscow City Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova said. The racist attacks appeared to peak earlier this month with the gruesome beheading of a Tajik migrant worker near Moscow, AP reported. Prosecutors say that the murderers preyed upon Central Asians, Caucasians and other non-Slavs with distinctly dark skin or Asian features. The group would attacked their victims on the streets and in pedestrian tunnels with hammers and other weapons, and they often videotaped their attacks and posted the clips online, AP reports. Meanwhile, the mother of 18-year-old Stanley Robinson, the Black student stabbed in the southern Russian city of Volgograd dismissed the notion that his attack was an act of random violence. She said she believes racism was the motivating factor. Stanley Robinson is in grave but stable condition in a Russian hospital, according to AP.

TAGS: african-american, hate crime, murder, Russians, sentenced, Stanley Robinson, student

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