Court sanctions arrest of suspected hijaker.

MOSCOW, July 31 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow's Meshchansky court on Friday
issued an arrest warrant for Kazakh citizen Magomed Potiyev, suspected of
the attempt to seize a passenger jet which arrived from Mineralnye Vody,
the Caucasus, to Moscow on July 29.
The court thereby met the petition of the department for transport of
the Investigations Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office (SKP).
"The court has ruled to select custody as the measure of restraint for
Potiyev, 40, suspected of the commission of crime covered by a Criminal
Code article ("illegal deprivation of freedom of two or more persons,") a
judge said announcing the decision.
Potiyev will be in custody until September 29. The decision may be
appealed at the Moscow City Court, but the suspect's lawyer said he would
decide on whether or not to lodge an appeal later.
The prosecutor supported the petition for the suspect's arrest, noting
that Potiyev has no registration in Russia and that he might escape, put
pressure on witnesses or obstruct the establishment of truth in the case.


.Police detain suspected masterminds behind Khimki Town Hall attack.

MOSCOW, July 31 (Itar-Tass) - Police in the Moscow region detained
suspected masterminds behind the attack on the building of the Khimki
administration, spokesman for Moscow region police Yevgeny Gildeyev told
Itar-Tass on Friday.
"In the course of the probe and operations/search events, Moscow
region police have established the identities of and detained two
activists who, according to prelminary infomation, might be the
masterminds of this crime," Gildeyev noted.
"Police, after questioning the detainees, are taking further measures
to find and detain other participates in illegal actions.
"A group of investigators was set up to probe the criminal case over
hooliganism," Gildeyev said.
A group of youths threw empty bottles and stones at the building of
the Khimki administration on July 28.
Police thanked the media representatives and the citizens who helped
the detectives.
"Complete information about the probe into the criminal case will
certainly be made public after the necessary procedures have been
finished," police said.
Meanwhile, the Khimki authorities said the July 28 attack had been "a
paid provocation."
"They were small boys and girls, cheated by means of money," first
deputy Khimki mayor Alexei Valov told reporters on Friday.
He underlined that the "action was by no means spontaneous." Just
before staging it, the participants gathered at the Petrovsko-Razumovskaya
railway station in Moscow.
Valov said the radicals had planned to foil the meeting in support of
the construction of the highway, organized by the United Russia's "Young
Guard:" the meeting gathered 300 people. "Luckily, the participants in the
meeting had dispersed by the time the radical youths arrived. Having
realized that, the extremists attacked the building of the administration."
The deputy mayor said the provocation was not so much against the
Khimki authorities as "against stability in Russia in general."
In his opinion, "a majority of the Khimki residents support the
construction of the highway because the town is suffocating from traffic
emissions, as some 150,000 cars pass it daily. The maximum permissible
content of harmful substances in the air in the town has been exceeded.
"Khimki residents practically do not participate in such protest
actions," Valov underlined.
According to him, an alternative option to build the highway increases
construction costs ten-fold and is fraught with delays, that are
unjustifiably long, if compared with the current project.
A deputy head of the Khimki administration, Alexei Khomutov, noted
that one of the two alternatives would require to move 30,000 residents to
other locations and billions of roubles to buy out land plots, while the
other variant was rejected as the highway would have run through protected
areas.
"A tunnel under the Khimki forest is an utopia technologically and
financially," Khomutov said.
Valov said the allegations that housing construction would be launched
in the place of the cut Khimki forest were "an improbable version."
"Petrol stations and road services will be set up along the road. But
dachas and mansions? Who will want to live near this large highway?" he
said.
Khimki's sanitary officer Vadim Zheleznyak said "there are no reasons
to claim that there is clean air in the Khimki forest. There were plans
back in the 1990s to relocate residents living on the edge of the forest
because of the heavy metals pollution caused a defense firm laboratory."
The Federal Road Agency (Rosavtodor) reminded that the construction of
the head stretch of the high-speed road between Moscow and St Petersburg
will provide a new "high-speed access to the Sheremteyvo airport and the
towns of Khimki, Dolgorpudny and Zelenograd, reduce transport costs and
time for drivers and unclog the M-10 traffic artery stretch running
through Khimki.
Roasavtodor emphasized that the Russian government took out 144,821
hectares of land from the Forest Fund for the project. The defenders of
the Khimki forest challenged this decision in court, but both the Supreme
Court and its Appeals Board upheld the government's decision as legitimate.
-0-myz


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