Two members of the Jewish Defense League were convicted of juvenile delinquency Friday in Manhattan federal court for dousing a Soviet diplomat with beef blood near the Soviet mission to the United Nations. Mitchell Rein, 18, of Brooklyn, and Zelig Spirn, 19, of Far Rockaway, N.Y. were placed on probation and ordered to pay up to $50 in cleaning the spattered clothes of German M. Kosenov, the second secretary at the mission. The spattering took place during a demonstration near the mission on March 15, 1973. German was the key witness for the prosecution at the trial last June. Federal Judge Harold R. Tyler, Jr., in announcing probation, said he was being “far more tolerant of your persons and rights than you were to a man who was a stranger to you.”
Reporting the stories that define our era. When history unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your support ensures we can document the complexities of war and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
