Two NTV Azeri producer attackers given 18-month prison terms

According to RIA Novosti, the court found Vladislav Barketov and Vitaly Golikov guilty of beating Elkhan Mirzoyev, who works for NTV, on April 3, 2006 in a Moscow subway car in a racially motivated incident.

Prosecutor Yelena Savina said she had asked for a two-year suspended sentence for the defendants.

Mirzoyev said a group of young people had entered the subway car at a station for the capital's famous Gorky Park. One of them approached him and told him he "must get out of Moscow." Another poured beer onto the producer's head after which the confrontation turned violent.

The incident follows a series of recent attacks on non-white foreign nationals in Russia.

In early April, a student from Senegal was shot dead in St.Petersburg on his way home from a nightclub, one of a string of killings in the city.

In late March, Zaur Tutov, the culture minister of the southern republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, was attacked by a group of 12-15 people at night in Moscow and hospitalized with a broken jawbone and concussion. The minister's lawyer said the attack was racially motivated.