(JTA) — A Brazilian man was sentenced to 35 months in jail for giving Jewish students a Nazi salute and exposing his swastika tattoo.
Luiz Vinicius Consenzo, 25, was sentenced in Rio de Janeiro’s criminal court, according to a Jan. 22 report by CONIB, the umbrella organization of Brazil’s Jewish communities.
Consenzo committed the act in front of a Jewish community center, the Clube Israelita Brasileiro, on Dec. 3, 2010, at a party hosted by Jewish students from the Federal Univesrity of Rio De Janeiro. He fled but police tracked him thanks to photos taken by the center’s president, Cezar Benjor.
Benjor and police investigators compared the photos to pictures of known neo-Nazis and identified Consenzo by the tattoo, according to a report on Ultimo Segundo, a news site.
Consenzo was the administrator of a community of neo-Nazis on the Brazilian social network Orkut. A complaint against him was filed by the Jewish Federation of Rio de Janaeiro, or Fierj.
Last month the television station Terra reported that prosecutors in Porto Alegre were preparing to charge four people with “Nazi crimes” for the first time in Brazilian history.
The four — Luzia Santos Pintos, Fabio Roberto Sturm, Laureano Vieira Toscani and Thiago da Silva — and 10 other gang members are accused of attacking four Jews on the street in Porto Alegre in 2005.
According to Terra, they are suspected of using knives and batons to severely beat their alleged victims.
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