Two more suspects indicted for Kiryat Shmona murders last month - Haaretz

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Mon., September 03, 2007 Elul 20, 5767

Israel Time: 18:54 (EST+7)

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		Murder suspect Vladislav Batnin. (Doron Golan)

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Last update - 14:03 03/09/2007

Two more suspects indicted for Kiryat Shmona murders last month

By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondent

State prosecutors indicted two suspects Monday morning for the murders of Yivgeni Diakov, 18 and Anatoly Ziskin, 24, which were perpetrated a month ago in Kiryat Shmona.

The pair of suspects, 22-year-old Vladislav Batnin and 23-year-old Felix Gottleib, were charged only after the psychiatric hospital where they had been placed for observation had ruled on their mental health.

Kiryat Shmona resident Boris Minkin, 25, was last week also charged with murder over the affair.

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Superintendent Yoram Azoulay, who headed the murder investigation, said: "These are codes of behavior that are simply unknown to us."

The motive for the murders apparently stems from a seemingly insignificant episode.

According to the testimony of Batnin's wife, a few weeks before the murders she and her husband left their apartment one day to find the building's stairway blocked by Ziskin, who refused to move. From that point on, Batnin apparently bore the latter a grudge for insulting his honor in front of his wife.

The Batnins later visited a public park in Kiryat Shmona often frequented on weekends by dozens of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Batnin became enraged when he saw Ziskin speaking to his wife. Investigators said that at this point the parties had consumed large amounts of alcohol.

Ziskin, who was married and had a 4-year-old daughter, subsequently rejected a demand to pay Batnin compensation amounting to a few hundred shekels for supposedly insulting his wife's honor.

After this refusal, Batnin, Gottleib and Minkin beat Ziskin, who then fled to his apartment. Batnin and Gottleib followed, and stabbed him to death while he was still on his way home.

The pair subsequently informed Minkin of their act, and the group decided to kill Diakov, a peripheral member of their circle who knew of the murder, as they feared he would give them up when questioned by police. They arranged to meet him in the park, where they strangled him with a shirt and then dumped his body into a ditch filled with water.

Galilee police said while the suspects have not confessed to the murders, they have acknowledged they are connected to the affair.

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14:03 Two more suspects indicted for Kiryat Shmona murders last month