Union maniac

 

 

 

Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches

MOSCOW - Hundreds of Moscow youths battled each other with sticks and iron bars in a street fight last month, and 18 persons were arrested, according to the Moscow police.

 

The police denied rumors that 10 people had been killed or seriously injured.

 

"No one was killed, and no one was wounded seriously enough to require hospitalization," an official at the city Interior Ministry said Saturday.

 

The official said that 18 people were arrested and charged with hooliganism after the brawl on Feb. 20.

 

The incident was first reported Feb. 24 in the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva. It said the fighting broke out between youths from the Pechatniki district in southeastern Moscow and young workers living in a dormitory belonging to a car factory in the district.

 

Meanwhile, the police detained 15 Crimean Tatars on Saturday after members of the ethnic group held up a banner demanding the right to live in their homeland, a dissident said in an interview with The Associated Press.

 

Vladimir Riabokon. an editor of the unofficial journal Express Chronicle, said that 20 people had gathered outside the Hotel Rossiya and unfurled a banner reading "Return Our Homeland to the Crimean Tatars."

 

About 250,000 Tatars were exiled from Crimea to Siberia and central Asia in 1944 following accusations that they collaborated with. the Nazis during World War II.

 

In Stockholm. Swedish news organizations reported that two Estonian nationalists accused of taking part in anti-Soviet activities were expelled Saturday from the Soviet Union to Sweden.

 

One of the two, Heiki Ahonen, reportedly refused to sign a formal request to emigrate and was forcibly expelled, the Stockholm-based Baltic Helsinki Group said.

 

Mr. Ahonen and Arvo Orula were greeted Saturday at the airport in Stockholm by a group of Estonians, the Swedish News, Agency reported.