Moscow Times - 06.12.02

 

Read Related Story: Copycat Signs in Voronezh

The Moscow Times

Anti-Semitic Poster on Moscow Ring Road (Part 2)

MOSCOW (Interfax) - The road sign reading Kill Yids that was spotted on the 83rd kilometer of the Moscow Ring Road earlier in the day was tied to a dummy bomb made of 12 hard paper cylinders filled with sugar and connected to an electric circuit.

An explosives team of the Federal Security Service's Moscow branch used a robot to remove the poster from the earth, moved it 10 meters away from the road and destroyed it with a water canon.

Investigators are studying the evidence and trying to pick fingerprints.

The whole operation ended at 5:20 p.m. The traffic has resumed.
A similar poster was installed on the 32nd kilometer of the road on May 27. Muscovite Tatiana Sapunova, 28, who tried to pull it out received numerous wounds. She is undergoing treatment in Israel.

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Moscow Times - 06.06.02

The Moscow Times

Copycat Anti-Semitic Signs Ripped Down in Voronezh

The Associated Press

Three posters saying "Death to Jews" appeared in the city of Voronezh on Wednesday, a week after a similar sign posted outside Moscow exploded in the face of a woman who tried to remove it, a Jewish group said.

The signs in Voronezh, 480 kilometers south of Moscow, had packages attached to them that police suspected might be explosives, said Alexander Axelrod, a member of the Anti-Defamation League.  Security and emergency officials shot water cannons at the packages, but they turned out to contain bricks.  The signs were torn down.

Last week, Tatyana Sapunova was driving outside Moscow when she spotted a roadside sign reading "Death to Jews."  She stopped her car and tried to yank the poster from the ground, apparently triggering an explosion that left her with severe burns and eye injuries.  Russia's Jewish community paid to send her to Israel on Tuesday for plastic surgery.

"It's a chain of intimidation," Axelrod said.  "It is unfortunate that it took this event in Moscow for police to pay attention to such things."

Citing numerous cases of anti-Semitic slogans sprayed in graffiti and of anti-Semitic acts, he added, "There's still not enough of a reaction to such hate crimes, and that only encourages the kind of people who want to express their xenophobic attitudes."

The Prosecutor General's Office insisted Wednesday that all "manifestations of extremism and ethic hatred" will be investigated, Interfax reported.

The explosion came amid heightened fears of racist violence in Moscow, and Russian skinheads have threatened a "war against foreigners." The day after the explosion, skinheads attacked a 16-year-old American Jewish boy in Moscow whose father serves as the rabbi in Voronezh.