Posted on 04/13/2004 1:51:36 PM PDT by yonif
A district court gave suspended sentences Tuesday to three teenage boys convicted of vandalizing tombstones at a Jewish cemetery in a Western Slovak city last year.
The three boys were part of a group of six who damaged 22 tombstones at the Jewish cemetery in Puchov last fall. The other three could not be prosecuted because they were legally minors at the time.
The district court in Povazska Bystrica ruled that Radovan Micek, 17, Marek Hofierka, 15, and his 17-year-old brother, Tomas, each be given a four-month suspended sentence and a year of probation, TASR news agency said.
The police who carried out the investigation determined that the boys' actions were not racially motivated. Damages were estimated at 17,000 koruna (US$512).
Jaroslav Franek, a top official with the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities, said he welcomed the ruling. He said it offered an adequate moral condemnation of the youngsters' actions without punishing them too harshly.
Most of Slovakia's Jews perished in concentration camps during World War II. After the war, many of the country's 620 Jewish cemeteries were left unattended, and at times they have become targets of vandalism.
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