Five men have been found guilty of taking part in ethnic clashes in Moscow last December over the shooting of a football fan.
Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court ruled the men, including three activists of the opposition Other Russia movement, called for mass disturbances and caused bodily harm to police during a rally on December 11, 2010.
The rally, to mark the fatal shooting of Spartak Moscow fan Yegor Sviridov, turned violent after 5,000 football fans and nationalists went on a rampage and called for the death of Russia’s migrant population.
President Dmitry Medvedev appealed for ethnic calm, saying race hate threatened “the very stability of the state.”
A protester threw water in the face of a prosecutor as he emerged from the Tverskoi District court to speak to journalists on Friday morning. Four people were later arrested.
Earlier on Friday, Aslan Cherkesov, from the Kabardino-Balkaria republic in the North Caucasus region, was jailed for 20 years for murdering Sviridov.
