Russian President Boris Yeltsin has pledged that members of the anti-Semitic group Pamyat will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for breaking into the offices of a Moscow newspaper last week.
Yeltsin’s statement was made through a spokesman last Friday, at the same time as police raided the apartment of the leader of Pamyat’s National Patriotic Front, whose members burst into the offices of a pro-democracy newspaper on Oct. 13.
In the apartment of Dimitri Vasiliev, police seized the videotape made by the gang during its brief occupation of the offices of the paper, Moskovski Komsomoletz.
The gang made the tape ostensibly to enable them to identify the staff. During their 20-minute holding of the paper’s editor, they read him a 10-point declaration which included demands he turn over the names of the paper’s journalists who have written “anti-patriotic” articles.
Vasiliev, who has not been identified as being present during the break-in, made no attempt to interfere with the police. He reportedly said that Moskovski Komsomoletz should be prosecuted for breaking Russian law for advocating “prostitution, homosexuality and Zionism.”
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