MOSCOW, October 18 (RIA Novosti) - A Moscow court extended the custody for two of three suspects in an August market explosion, which killed 11 people, until February 21, 2007, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Wednesday.
A bomb went off August 21 at 10:27 a.m. Moscow time (6:27 a.m. GMT) at the Cherkizovsky market, where many Asians work. Eleven people died and more than 50 were injured when the explosion ripped through the market in northeast Moscow.
The court will decide whether to extend the custody for a third defendant October 20 because his attorney failed to attend this court session due to an illness.
Investigators said the alleged bombers confessed they were motivated by racial hatred. As with most markets in Moscow, many traders at the Cherkizovsky market are from the North Caucasus region and former Central Asian Soviet republics, as well as China and Vietnam.
Racist sentiments have spread among young Russians in recent years, resulting in a growing number of attacks on dark-skinned foreigners. Human rights groups have expressed alarm as police and courts continue to treat such cases as hooliganism, rather than ethnically motivated crimes.
The chief of the Moscow police said in August that suspects could have been involved in eight other bomb attacks.
