RIGA - Security police announced on Wednesday that Russian citizen Alexander Kazakov, who was deported by the Interior Ministry for inciting racial hatred during his protest activities against the country's school reform program, had received financial support from Russia.
"We have information that Kazakov, who was expelled recently, had connections and also received financial support from his supporters in Russia," Security Police chief Janis Reiniks said in the interview to the Neatkariga Rita Avize daily.
He added that the Security Police had so far been successful in identifying individuals who had intended to provoke youngsters to participating in pubic disorder.
"Our main task in relation to developments surrounding the education reform is to identify persons or groups of persons, who would try to provoke youngsters to mass disorders to aggravate inter-ethnic tension," said Reiniks. "So far we have always been able to get information in time to take preventive actions but we cannot rule out the possibly that somebody else with similar intentions may turn up."
Kazakov, a member of the Headquarters for the Defense of Russian Schools (Shtab) and an advisor to Russian MP Dmitry Rogozin, was ostracized from Latvia on Sept. 4. Two days later the Russian Foreign Ministry demanded an official explanation over the expulsion, but the Latvian Foreign Ministry has not yet decided whether it would respond.
Despite being deported, Kazakov continues to have influence among Latvia's large ethnic Russian community, as it was his plea 's made by cell phone - at the all-Russian congress in Riga on Sept. 11 that prevented the event from collapsing due to internal bickering.
