Following a guilty verdict earlier this month, the Moscow City Court sentenced six far-right college students to life in prison for their role in the Cherkizov market bombing, according to a May 15, 2008 report by Radio Liberty. Two other defendants were sentenced to 20 and 13 years respectively, the latter for the murder of Armenian student Vigen Abramyanets. A jury earlier found the defendants guilty of terrorism, 14 murders (four of them children) and the attempted murder of the 61 people who were injured in the blast, along with responsibility for seven other explosions around the city in 2006. The Cherkizov market blast was the deadliest attack on ethnic minorities in Russia by extremist nationalists to date. The defendants were members of the Spas club, which one of them headed--a combat skills club that trained an estimated 2,000 youths in Moscow. Aleksandr Verkhovsky of the Sova Center was quoted in the report saying that while the sentences were just, the number of hate crimes convictions in Russia has actually fallen in recent years (there were 33 convictions in 2006, but only 24 in 2007) at a time when the number of hate crimes is growing dramatically.

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