Ethnic tension fears in Russia after Chechen colonel murder

MOSCOW — Russian police arrested a dozen people on Saturday as fears grew of fresh ethnic clashes a day after an army colonel who murdered a Chechen teenage girl in 2000 was gunned down, a report said.Russians were divided over the death of Yury Budanov, who was shot dead in broad daylight Friday in central Moscow in a contract-style killing. He was convicted of the murder of 18-year-old Elza Kungayeva in 2003 and stripped of his rank.Even after his death he remains such a polarising figure that the Kremlin and Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who has called the former colonel a schizophrenic and "the enemy of the Chechen people," have remained conspicuously silent.The murder follows unprecedented ethnic riots in Moscow in December and comes as the country gears up to mark the Day of Russia, a state holiday, on Sunday.Authorities deployed a reinforced police presence at the scene of December's riots near the Kremlin and detained 12 people, among them Vladimir Tor, the leader of a tiny nationalist group, Itar-Tass news agency reported.Police forbade access to the area after a number of leaders of banned nationalist groups gathered there overnight, it added.Budanov's supporters including army officers and football fans have deposited heaps of flowers at the murder scene since Friday."We are proud of him. He did not forsake his duty and did not betray his fatherland," Yana Nikolayeva, holding a picture of Budanov, told AFP as her male companion stood nearby clutching red carnations.Former officer Mikhail Lebedev, who spent six months on a tour of duty in Chechnya in 2003, defended the colonel as a "true leader" who never betrayed his men."You have to understand that it was war. He acted according to the laws of wartime."Budanov was jailed for 10 years for Kungayeva's murder but freed on parole in 2009 after serving most of the sentence, provoking angry protests by Chechens and Russian rights activists.He was the commander of a tank regiment deployed in Chechnya after the start of the Kremlin's second war ag

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