The five members of the Jewish Defense League who entered guilty pleas to an II-count federal indictment have had their sentencing dates consolidated and will all be sentenced Dec. 15, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District. The five defendants are Thomas Macintosh, 36, of Woodbury, N.J. Steven Ehrlich. 21. San Francisco; and Russel Kelner, 35, Jeffrey Weingarten, 21, and Steven Rombom. 18, all of Brooklyn.
The counts to which the five pleaded guilty included conspiracy to transport explosives illegally in interstate commerce; and transportation of a 30-caliber rifle into New York. The federal indictment stemmed from shootings and pipe-bombings against targets in the Bronx and Manhattan. Ehrlich had originally been scheduled for sentencing by federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon on Nov. 29; Kelner and Weingarten on Dec. 7, and Rombom and Macintosh on Dec. 15.
A hearing on a complaint that Kelner violated a one-year suspended sentence in an earlier incident, scheduled for last Thursday was postponed until Dec, 15, when it will be considered during the sentencing of the five JDL defendants, a JDL spokesman said. Kelner, former JDL operations officer, received the sentence in 1975 for making a televised threat to assassinate Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, when Arafat visited New York to address the United Nations General Assembly.
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