Russian police detain Azeri murder suspect amid anti-immigrant riots

PanARMENIAN.Net - Police in Moscow say a suspect in the murder that recently sparked violent clashes between antimigrant protesters and police has been detained, RFE/RL reported.

Police in the Russian capital announced hours earlier that Orhan Zahid-oglu Zeynalov of Azerbaijan was wanted for the killing last week of a 25-year-old Muscovite in the neighborhood of Biryulyovo.

That death stoked ethnic tensions and brought Russian nationalists into the streets for a demonstration on October 13 that devolved into lawlessness hours later, as bands of young men broke shop windows and overturned cars.

A total of 23 people, including eight police officers, were injured when some of those rioters stormed a vegetable warehouse in Moscow's Biryulyovo district, where Zeynalov reportedly worked.

After news that police were seeking an Azerbaijani national in connection with the killing on October 15, a spokesman for Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry said authorities there were ready to help their Russian colleagues find Zeynalov, if such help were requested.

"This person has never been wanted in Azerbaijan and is not on a wanted-persons list now," spokesman Ehsan Zahidov said. "[Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin] claims that Russia addressed Azerbaijan asking for help. I must say that up to this date, the Russian law-enforcement agencies have not sent any request to the Interior Ministry of Azerbaijan. None at all. Of course, if they file a request, we will consider it."

Aleksey Pronkin, a Moscow resident who shared an apartment with Zeynalov, told journalists that Zeynalov was easily agitated and could become aggressive.

Pronkin said that when he saw the closed-circuit footage of the attacker on television, "I saw that was him.... The blue jacket was also his. That was exactly his face there."

Police detained some 1,200 migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus at the vegetable warehouse in question on October 14.

The warehouse has been shut down temporarily by police.

The police chief in the Biryulyovo district, Gennady Kaverin, was dismissed by the Moscow Interior Affairs Directorate on October 15.