A teenage Muslim girl has been stoned to death in Ukraine after taking part in a beauty contest, it has been claimed. Police said the main suspect had developed an unhealthy and unrequited obsession with Miss Koren.The body of 19-year-old Katya Koren was found dumped in a forest on the Crimean peninsula a week after she went missing amid suggestions that she had been ‘punished’ for flouting Sharia law.
Police said that Miss Koren, a former participant in regional heats of the Miss Ukraine beauty pageant, had suffered multiple blows to the head inflicted by one or more stones or rocks.
There were conflicting reports of how and why she was murdered. Some local newspapers claimed she had been stoned to death by hardline Muslims upset by her participation in the beauty contest and that police had three suspects in their sights.
But the police said her killing had nothing to do with sectarian violence and that the girl had been killed by a psychologically troubled classmate who had given her a lift on his moped and then robbed and possibly raped her before battering her to death with a rock.
“A student did it, killing his classmate.
There is no other underlying reason, neither religious nor linked with inter-ethnic conflicts,” said Sergei Reznikov, a senior policeman involved in the case.
The area is home to more than 250,000 Muslim Crimean Tatars, and although there has been mob violence in the past sparked by perceived historical injustices, cases of Sharia punishment being meted out by stoning are unheard of. Police said the main suspect, 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev, had a long history of mental health problems and was already in custody.
He is understood to have confessed amid reports from his village suggesting he had developed an unhealthy and unrequited obsession with Miss Koren. He is now undergoing a series of tests to see whether he is of sound mind or not.
