"FBI agents will monitor a Charlottesville investigation into a string of attacks on University of Virginia students by black youths, but the bureau will not conduct its own investigation, FBI officials said Wednesday.

The bureau's senior resident agent in Charlottesville, Jim Lamb, contacted a city investigator Wednesday to discuss the case after a white-rights group formally requested the FBI look into alleged civil rights abuses against the victims, according to FBI spokesman Lawrence Barry. 'We're satisfied that they're pursuing this aggressively and, at this point, we don't intend to initiate an investigation,' Barry said. 'We're following it, and we've offered our assistance to the Charlottesville Police Department.'

Barry added that the U.S. Attorney's Office agreed with the FBI's decision.

Officials with former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke's European-American Unity and Rights Organization asked the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice to look into the attacks earlier this week, saying that city officials and police are trying to 'cover up' these racially motivated crimes.'

Police have said three of the black suspects reported that they targeted only white victims. But authorities later said it was 'premature' to say if the crimes are race-based.

The Louisiana-based white-rights group has threatened to hold a forum in Charlottesville next week, and 'annoying' protests after that; if city Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman does not treat the beatings as hate crimes.

Chapman declined to comment Wednesday.

Nine teenagers and 18-year-old Gordon Fields are facing various charges ranging from simple assault to malicious wounding to robbery in the series of six attacks in the University of Virginia area between September and January, Authorities have declined to release the details or locations of two of the attacks. The others occurred on Rugby Road, Maury Avenue, Madison Avenue and 15th Street.

Most of the 10 assault victims are UVa students, police said. And several of the suspects are high school athletes, though authorities declined to give exact figures.

In at least one of the incidents, attackers yelled racial epithets to the college students as they beat them, police and the victims said." (Reed Williams, The Daily Progress, February 21, 2002)