Riot Police in Moscow Disrupt Ivan Khutorskoi Memorial Tournament: Fifty People Detained

Radio Svoboda

November 17, 2019

Law enforcement officers in Moscow have disrupted a martial arts tournament organized by antifa activists in memory of Ivan Khutorskoi, one of the antifa movement’s leaders.

Eyewitnesses report that two buses loaded with riot police drove up to the tournament venue. The police officers, who wore masks, burst into the facility and forced all the event’s participants and guests to line up against the wall face-first after confiscating their mobile phones. The detainees were then transported in several groups to police precincts in the Sokol, Airport, and Khoroshovo districts of Moscow.

At one of the precincts, the antifascists were told they had been detained after a particular BOLO was issued. Currently, police are photographing their internal passports and checking their names in the Interior Ministry database. In total, around fifty people have been detained.

Ivan Khutorskoi, a leader of the antifa movement, was murdered in the stairwell of his own apartment building in Moscow on November 16, 2009. Police investigators believe he was killed by Alexei Korshunov, a member of BORN (Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists), which was responsible for a dozen high-profile murders.

After the murder, Korshunov fled to Zaporozhye, where he died in September 2011. Local authorities allege that he blew himself up accidentally during a morning jog with a grenade he carried with him.

Translated by the Russian Reader