Skinheads Boast of Scholar's Murder

June 29, 2004 -- A respected scholar was gunned down, shot in the doorway of his apartment, and less than a week later a neo-fascist group posted a "death sentence" for the man on its Web site. The leader of the group says police "don't dare" come after him or his followers.

Nikolai Girenko, a Russian anthropologist who had helped St. Petersburg prosecutors investigate several racially motivated murders, was killed by a shotgun blast through the door of his St. Petersburg apartment on June 19.

Four days later, the group Russkaya Respublika (Russian Republic) posted on its Web site a document titled "Sentence No. 1" from its "Tribunal," which laid out what it said were Girenko's crimes — and sentenced him to death.

"The defense did not present convincing evidence in relationship to the defendant and I find N.M. Girenko a confirmed and incorrigible enemy of the Russian people and sentence him to the highest measure of punishment — to be shot," said the statement, which was dated June 12.

In an interview with the Russian news site Strana.ru, Vladimir Popov, the leader of Russkaya Respublika, said the group was responsible for the killing.

"He knew what he was getting into," Popov told Strana.ru. "The sentence was carried out in the name of those he put away."

Popov refused to name the person who fired the shot, but said he was not afraid of the police.

"They won't come to us," he said. "They don't dare. They are afraid of the Russian question. I already know that right now they are trying to write this off as random crime."

Three days after the killing of Girenko, St. Petersburg regional governor Valentina Matvienko announced that her office would oversee the investigation and said 120 investigators had been assigned to the case.

After the posting on the Russkaya Respublika Web site, a spokeswoman for the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office, Elena Ordynskaya, said that all leads in the case would be investigated, including the neo-Nazi group's claim.