ST. PETERSBURG Aug 31, (AFP) – A Russian court has jailed a skinhead for 11 years for stabbing a student to death he thought was anti-fascist on the anniversary of Hitler’s death, a court said on August 31. Vladimir Sosnikhin, 22, was jailed for killing the student on April 20, 2008, mistaking him and his friends for a group of anti-fascist activists with whom they had had a fight earlier.

Rights activists say that violent hate crimes are a growing problem in Russia and that racist gangs frequently target the country’s large population of non-Slavic migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Between January and July this year, 37 people were killed and at least 126 were injured in xenophobic attacks in Russia, according to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, an organisation that tracks hate crimes.