Four suspects in the firebombing of a Siberian synagogue will
not be charged with hate crimes.
The suspects, all men in their early 20s including two
university students, were charged with hooliganism for a February 2004 attack
on a wooden shul in Chelyabinsk,
according to a May 22 report in the local Chelyabinski Rabochi newspaper.
Police justified their decision by citing an absence of
anti-Semitic graffiti painted on or nearby the shul, which was attacked with
Molotov cocktails. As such, they maintain there was no clear cause for trying
them under Russia’s
hate crimes statute, which carries much sharper penalties.
Although anti-Semitic attacks fall under the statute’s provision
barring “incitement of national, racial or religious enmity,” they are rarely prosecuted
as hate crimes, especially in the provinces.
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