Russian police have arrested two men in connection with the assaults of a local community leader and a visiting rabbi.Ervin Kirshtein and a Canadian referred to only as Rabbi Zvi were attacked on Monday evening and berated with anti-Semitic slogans. Officials in Ivanovo, an industrial center northeast of Moscow, are treating the crime under Russia’s hate crime statute.”They were wearing traditional Jewish clothes at the moment of the attack. This possibly caused the attack,” the regional prosecutor’s office said, according to a report on Interfax.The prosecutor’s office went on to say that “police found evidence proving that the suspects belong to the skinhead movement.”Anti-Semitic incidents are rarely prosecuted under the tougher hate crime regulations; more commonly they are classified as “hooliganism.” If convicted of “inciting inter-ethnic, racial or religious enmity,” the two attackers face penalties including a possible $20,000 fine and five years in prison.
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