MOSCOW, March 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Supreme Court upheld Thursday a not guilty verdict in the case of a Vietnamese student murdered in St. Petersburg in October 2004, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the courtroom.
Vu An Tuan was stabbed to death in Russian's second largest city on October 13, 2004 by a group of drunken teenagers, out of alleged race-hate motives.
On November 13, 2006, a St. Petersburg court acquitted all 17 suspects of the murder, but sentenced three of them to prison terms over separate attacks on foreign nationals. Prosecutors later appealed to the Supreme Court against the acquittal.
Earlier in October, the jury found nine of the suspects guilty of attacking foreign nationals, but not of killing Vu An Tuan. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry condemned the acquittals.
Russia has experienced a wave of attacks on non-white foreigners last year, particularly in St. Petersburg, where an Indian student was stabbed to death and a Sudanese national attacked in September.
