FSPE employees try to evict Caucasian refugees from Moscow hostel

Right at this moment, employees of the Federal Service for Punishment Enforcement (FSPE) try to move several families of refugees from Azerbaijan and Abkhazia out of a hostel located at No. 19 Yasny Proezd. Nikita Arkin, an activist of the group of tenants' support, has informed the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent about it from the place of the incident.

According to Mr Arkin, at about 9 a.m. some 15 FSPE employees in plain clothes, many of whom are already known to the tenants and civil activists who support them, arrived to the hostel, went up to the second floor of one of entrances, and are now trying to get into three apartments with the aim to evict their residents. They have blocked the entrance door, not to let anyone to get in to help the persons to be ousted.

On June 19, at the Babushkinskiy District Court, an unexpectedly fast decision was made on the suit lodged by the tenants of the Yasny Proezd hostel. The case that had lasted for about three years ended with replacement of the judge and a super-fast verdict, the "Novaya Gazeta" writes.

In the past, the former hostel at No. 19 Yasny Proezd belonged to the "Smena" garment factory. In the early 1990s, under decision of Moscow authorities refugees from Abkhazia and Baku were also placed there. When the factory got bankrupt, contrary to the law, the hostel was delivered not into the municipal, but into the federal ownership. And then, the house went to the DFSPE - Department of the Federal Service of Punishment Enforcement - as an object "without encumbrance". And the DFSPE, in order to liberate the apartments for its own employees, began evicting former tenants. Within two years, 25 families lost their apartments.

The remaining tenants, supported by the arbitration court, demanded to recognize the transfer of the house to the DFSPE null and void, to legitimate them as apartment owners and to let them privatize their housing property.