Rule of terror in home for elderly

MOSCOW (Reuter) - Elderly ex- convicts billeted at an old people's home at Novoyeniseisk in Siberia are terrorising and killing the ordinary pensioners who are also forced to live there, the weekly Moscow News reported.

'Every year,' the paper said, 'two or three inmates commit new crimes and are sent back to places of confinement already familiar to them, while their victims, elderly women teachers and collective farmers, are taken in the opposite direction to the cemetery.' Terrified pensioners huddled in corners, Moscow News said, while criminals feasted on the illegal proceeds of their sales of the home's bed-linen, clinking vodka glasses and yelling curses.

The paper said convicts now made up roughly half of the home's 452 residents. The rest 'quietly rejoice at night if they have managed not to have been beaten up by their tattooed and perpetually drunk neighbours'.