Police probing migrant worker's killing

Ultranationalists claim responsibility

By Michael Schwirtz
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

December 14, 2008

MOSCOW – Police in Moscow are investigating the killing of a Central Asian migrant worker, who was stabbed several times and decapitated in what appeared to be an attack by ultranationalists.

The severed head of the victim, a citizen of Tajikistan, was discovered Wednesday in a trash bin, wrapped in a plastic bag, the press service for the investigative wing of the Prosecutor General's Office said.

Investigators say the victim and another Tajik migrant worker were attacked Dec. 6 after they left work at a food warehouse south of Moscow. The newspaper Kommersant cited unnamed police sources, who said the victim was Salekh Azizov, 20, from Vidnoe, also south of Moscow. The second Tajik worker escaped but was hospitalized with injuries, investigators said.
An obscure group calling itself the Militant Organization of Russian Nationalists claimed responsibility for the killing, in an e-mail statement sent to two human rights organizations that monitor hate crimes in Russia. The statement included a photograph of the victim's severed head.

The authors of the statement said the killing was “a demonstration of their resolve to fight against the non-Russian occupation, and a warning to officials that the same will happen to them if they do not stop the flow of immigration,â€