19 young people from Ticino charged "Men maltreated, urinated on, smeared with excrement"
The Ticino authorities are investigating 19 young people accused of assault, robbery, deprivation of liberty and blackmail. Their victims were suspected paedophiles.
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- The Ticino judiciary is investigating 18 minors and an 18-year-old from Lugano.
- The group allegedly approached men on the internet who were interested in boys in order to arrange a date with them.
- The men were then allegedly humiliated, beaten and blackmailed.
- The young people were modeled on the Occupy Pedophilia movement of an extreme right-wing Russian named Maxim Martsinkevich.
The juvenile justice system and the Ticino cantonal police have announced that between October 1 and 3, they managed to strike a blow against 19 young people in Lugano who are accused of vigilante justice.
They are 18 people aged between 13 and 17 and one 18-year-old: they are said to have arranged to meet men on the Internet who were allegedly interested in underage boys. As soon as they met the men, they were "punished".
The young people from Ticino took the neo-Nazi Maxim Martsinkevich as their role model. The Russian, who died in 2020 at the age of 36, founded a movement in 2011 that he called Occupy Pedophilia.
Its aim was to humiliate paedophiles: Martsinkevich and his friends pretended to be underage boys, arranged to meet men online and beat them up in a group. They recorded on video how they poured excrement over the people.
Alleged suicide in remand prison
The neo-Nazis were not squeamish in their actions: For the group, all homosexual men are also paedophiles. Young people who fell for their Internet advances also fell into their clutches. Marzinkewitsch ended up in prison three times for various offenses.
He was sentenced a fourth time in 2018: A judge sent him to a labor colony for ten years for robbery and hooliganism. The convict appealed against the sentence, but was found dead in a remand prison in Chelyabinsk Oblast on September 16, 2020. He is said to have taken his own life.
The young people from Ticino copied the actions of the far-right Russian. They approached their victims on Instagram and Tinder and lured them to parks or apartments in Lugano.
Victims are also checked
"Some of the men were maltreated, urinated on or smeared with excrement," journalist Gerhard Lob told SRF. "Some were blackmailed, money was demanded so that they could be released."
The juvenile court must now rule on the charges, which include coercion, assault, robbery, deprivation of liberty and blackmail. "The young people have a lot to be prepared for," says Lob.
According to SRF, some justified their actions with the inaction of the authorities: Whether they really wanted to report pedophiles but had not been heard is now being investigated. But their victims could also get into trouble with the justice system: One man has just been given a conditional sentence, says journalist Lob. Other people are being investigated.