Interfax - 03.05.2007

Student sentenced for sms-messages promoting anti-Semitism outside Moscow

MOSCOW - A court in Sergiyev-Posad, outside Moscow, has found a 22-year-old student of a Moscow law university guilty of sending sms-messages promoting anti-Semitism, the Moscow region prosecutor's office said on its website on Monday.

"The Radonezh municipal television and radio company broadcast a series of programs dedicated to Victory Day in Sergiyev-Posad on May 9, 2006. Anchors in the studio accepted telephone calls from the viewers, as well as sms-messages, which were shown as roller captions. At 4:31 p.m., the extensive audience of the television station saw the text of an sms-message that was an affront to the national dignity of representatives of the Jewish ethnicity and non-Russians as a whole and called for extremist actions against them," the prosecutor's office said.

The suspect, Andrei Kachanov, was sentenced to 150 hours of community service.