MOSCOW – A Russian court on Friday sentenced five teenagers to prison terms for beating a Jewish man, dragging him to a cemetery and fatally stabbing him with metal cemetery cross, a court official said.
The Yekaterinburg Regional Court convicted the five of murder motivated by ethnic hatred, sentencing four of them to terms ranging from 5-7 years and one other to 10 years in a prison colony, court secretary Yekaterina Maslennikova said.
Prosecutors said the five, ranging in age from 12 to 17, were drunk on Oct. 1, 2005, when they encountered a 21-year-old Jewish man and attacked him. After the man fell to the ground, the group took a metal cross from a grave headstone and stabbed him.
Russia has seen a marked rise in xenophobia and racism in recent years, with a series of attacks on dark-skinned residents, foreigners and Jews. Last year, 53 people were killed and another 460 injured in apparent hate crimes, according to the Sova human rights center.
Rights groups say authorities do little to combat the crimes.
Yekaterinburg is about 900 miles east of Moscow.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox