MINSK, December 19 (IslamOnline) - Belarus' first trial against skinheads ended in sentencing the four defendants to imprisonment.

Terms of imprisonment for the four youths, three of them minors, vary from 3.5 years in a training prison to 6 years in a general type prison for adults. The maximum punishment according to article 130 of the Criminal Code, dealing with the crime of enflaming ethnic hatred, is up to 15 years in prison.

The sentences pronounced by Viciebsk regional court were assumed to be quite severe and came as a surprise for all present at the final session of the court proceedings, the defendants being naturally among the most impressed.

All four defendants said they would appeal.

The trial followed the investigation conducted by the KGB (State Security Committee) local branch. The investigation started after the students, who had come to Viciebsk from different countries of Asia and Africa to study at the local Medical University, demanded from the rector to protect them from repeated assaults and robberies carried out by unknown criminals.

Only then was it found out that those criminals were local skinheads. During the preliminary investigation, more facts about the activities of neo-Nazi groups in Viciebsk became known, mostly from the young Nazis’ confessions during the investigation that, according to the investigators, sounded more like bragging.

The youths did not conceal their dislike for foreigners from Asian and African countries, claiming that they were “involved in drug trafficking”and “spread venereal diseases”. Also from their testimonies read by the prosecutor’s office representative at the court proceedings, the motive of “the fight against terrorism” emerged for the first time in Belarus as the grounds for such a dislike.

There were as many as forty people in the group of skinheads in Viciebsk who had chosen one of the squares near the city center as a favorite place for their gatherings. Ironically, the square was named after the World War II Victory over the German Nazi and those gatherings had been taking place close to the monument devoted to the memory of those who perished in the fight against the Nazis.

The young Nazi had been holding meetings at the Victory Square for some years prior to the investigation. Quite often, the meetings ended in marches through the streets of the city to the Medical University hostel where the encountered foreigners were beaten up and robbed of their money and occasionally even food. Among the victims named at the court were citizens of Nepal, India and Libya.

Viciebsk KGB spokesman said one of the defendants, 18-year-old Siargej Kamiankou, did not hide from investigators his sympathies for Hitler and Mussolini, as well as for the Russian nationalist figure Alexander Barkashov and his “Russian National Unity” movement. Neo-Nazi magazines and newspapers brought from Russia were distributed among the members of the group.

All of small neo-Nazi groups existing in Belarus are known to be the offshoots of bigger groups in Russia where they find support in traditionalist Pan-Slavonic ideology and imperialistic policies of the present Russian authorities in Chechnya.

Last year, one of the leaders of the “Russian National Unity” in Belarus was sentenced to a long term prison sentence for involvement in the kidnapping and murder of an independent TV journalist known as one of the present regime’s opponents.