Chelyabinsk, Russia – 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.
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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. [JTA]