3 arrested in Russian synagogue vandalism

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Police apprehended three youths who damaged a Russian synagogue.

On the afternoon of Jan. 23, the youths burst into the prayer hall of a synagogue in the Nizhny Novgorod region, according to a report on the Web site Jewish.ru. The vandals threw a Torah and several other religious books out the window but did not injure any of the worshipers.

They were apprehended shortly after the incident.

Although it is unclear what charges they will face, Russian courts often prosecute cases of ethnic violence as hooliganism, avoiding Russia’s hate crimes statute, which carries more stringent penalties.

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