MOSCOW, October 23 (RAPSI) - Over 2,000 offences connected with the organization of illegal immigration have been uncovered in Russia in the past nine months, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said on Wednesday during the "government hour" in the State Duma.

According to Kolokoltsev, the amount of crimes increased by a factor of three compared with a year earlier.
The amount of migration crimes terminated by police this year increased more than 1.5 times, he added.

Last week, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at the City Duma meeting that around 650 criminal cases over the organization of illegal immigration have been initiated in Moscow since the start of the year. As a comparison, less than 20 migration cases were opened last year, Sobyanin said.

Russia's anti-migration sentiment reached its climax this summer when an incident at an open-air market in Moscow left a police officer with a broken skull. A police officer was beaten up when he tried to arrest a 25-year-old Dagestani native wanted on suspicion of trying to rape an under-aged girl.

Another incident occurred a week before with anti-migrant riots that targeted a vegetable warehouse in the Biryulyovo neighborhood in Moscow. Violence erupted after protests over the fatal stabbing of a 25-year-old. Hundreds of people were detained by police. Around 70 people have been charged to date with minor administrative offenses.

On October 14, more than a thousand people, most of them reportedly labor migrants based in or around Biryulyovo, were detained. The round-up seemed to be a response to anti-migrant sentiment.

The suspected killer, identified as Orkhan Zeinalov, from Azerbaijan, was apprehended by police special forces in the city of Kolomna, some 120 kilometers southwest of Moscow the next day, and was flown to Moscow in a helicopter.