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MOSCOW, Dec 8 (AFP) - The Rwandan embassy has formally asked the Russian Foreign Ministry to investigate the death of a 27-year-old Rwandan student who was killed after falling from a window at a Moscow State University hostel, the daily Pravda reported Tuesday.
The student, Jean-Claude Nsengiumva, died after he was allegedly beaten in a hostel room by a group of men from the Caucasus and then was thrown or fell from the eighth-floor window, according to Pravda and The Moscow Times, an English-language daily.
The Rwandan embassy asked the foreign ministry "to do all it can to investigate scrupulously this affair, to find and punish the guilty," according to Pravda.
The embassy also denied and denounced a story published December 1 in the daily Moskovky Komsomolets stating that Nsengiumva, a fourth-year journalism student, was either thrown from the window by two friends he was with or had committed suicide.
The Moscow Times said many students at Moscow State University were living in fear because administrators in nearly all of the university's hostels were renting rooms or even entire floors to "nonstudent thugs" from the Caucacus in order to raise money.
The incident involving Nsengiumva on the night of November 28 involved four African students and about 20 men from the Caucacus and was allegedly triggered by a racial slur directed at one of the Africans.
The reports said the presence of nonstudent residents in the hostels had sparked a sharp rise in break-ins, robberies and rapes.
cb/nb AFP AFP SEQN-0099
