MOSCOW. March 17 (Interfax) - The transport division of the Investigative Committee of Russia is probing the operations of an extremist community the members of which are charged with attacking foreigners, official spokesman for the Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin told Interfax on Wednesday.
He said that five residents of Moscow and Moscow region aged from 16 to 27 have been charged with forming an extremist community, provoking hatred, causing bodily injuries, robbery and murder.
"The investigation has established that Denis Kuznetsov, a 20-year-old resident of Moscow region, set up an extremist community. The other members of the community were Yevgeny Marehcnhuk and Maxim Bizin and also a 16-year-old Moscow school boy and a 17-year-old girl studying at a medical school," Markin said.
Kuznetsov "arranged meetings with young people at which he tried to persuade them to set up militant groups to commit violent crimes against anyone not looking like a Slav," he said.
As a result in April through July 2010 members of the extremist community murdered one person, made one armed attack and maimed five people in Moscow's Maryina Roshcha neighborhood, Markin said.
It was reported earlier that the activities of a youth group numbering seven people had been curbed.
Three members of the group, including its leader, were taken into custody, two more underage members subjected to travel restrictions pending trial, and two others declared wanted, a source with law enforcement agencies told Interfax earlier on Wednesday.
The young people are suspected of killing a citizen of Uzbekistan in northern Moscow in May 2010 and committing seven attacks using cold weapons on people looking like natives of Central Asia or the Caucasus.
The suspects have already acknowledged their guilt, the source said.