Riot police chief is sentenced

MOSCOW (Reuter) - A Latvian court yesterday sentenced a former top Soviet riot police officer to four years in prison for his role in an attack on the Latvian interior ministry two years ago in which five people died. The court in Riga halved the sentence passed on Sergei Parfyonov to take account of time spent in prison since his arrest in October 1991.

Parfyonov was deputy commander of the Riga detachment of the feared Soviet OMON riot police that led an assault on the Interior Ministry in January 1991, when Latvia was still a Soviet republic.