A Jewish Brooklyn man has pleaded not guilty to charges of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Police arrested Ivan Ivanov Monday after discovering pipe bombs and other weapons at his home.
Ivanov, who had long been suspected of a September spree of spray-painting anti-Semitic graffiti on houses, cars, playgrounds and two synagogues in his Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, implicated himself in the graffiti incidents during a search of his home Sunday and was arrested.
After Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge John Wilson set bail at $150,000 and ordered Ivanov to surrender his passport, his attorney Adrian Lesher told reporters his client was Jewish.
The New York Times reported that Ivanov told police that he was Italian by birth, raised in Bulgaria and trained by the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
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