Russia needs judicial equality

Police have released over 60 football fans detained on Saturday in riots in downtown Moscow, in which 29 people were injured, a spokesman for the Moscow interior department said on Sunday, RIA Novosti reports.

An unsanctioned rally to demand an investigation into the death of 28-year-old Spartak Moscow fan Yegor Sviridov, killed earlier this week in a fight between football fans and internal migrants from the North Caucasus, gathered about 5,000 people on central Moscow's Manezh Square on Saturday.

The rioters who chanted nationalist slogans and burned firecrackers and flares clashed with police, with injuries reported on both sides.

"Yesterday, 65 participants in the unsanctioned rally on Manezh Square were detained. By now all of them have been set free after protocols on administrative offences were drawn up," the spokesman said.

Some of the fans will have to come to police stations again to continue investigation into their offences, the spokesman said.

According to the Russian political scientist, editor-in-chief of Vestnik Kavkaza, Dr. Alexey Vlasov, there is no obvious answer to the question, as who organized the meeting in the center of Moscow. Some experts believe that the activity could be part of a campaign undertaken to damage the reputation of the new mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin.

The head of the Center for Caucasian Studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Dr. Ismail Agakishiyev, has stressed the point that Russian courts should always remain unprejudiced. "Our justice should be fair for all citizens of Russia,"Dr. Agakishiyev said.