MOSCOW (Reuters) – A court in southern Russia on Friday sentenced five men to more than six years in prison each in the first convictions related to a mass anti-Israel protest last October at an airport in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region.
The men, who were given sentences ranging from just over six years to nine years for engaging in rioting, did not admit guilt, the court in the Krasnodar region said. One protester was also found guilty of committing violence against a government official.
The trial was moved from Dagestan to Krasnodar due to the sensitivity of the case.
Last October hundreds of anti-Israel protesters stormed an airport in the city of Makhachkala where a plane from Tel Aviv had just arrived in a spate of unrest in the North Caucasus over Israel’s war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Video footage showed the protesters, mostly young men, waving Palestinian flags, breaking down glass doors and running through the airport shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater).
The crowd converged on the airport after a message on a local Telegram channel urged Dagestanis to meet the “uninvited guests” in “adult fashion” and to get the plane and its passengers to turn around and fly somewhere else.
The channel, which was later banned by Telegram, did not use the word “Jew” but referred to the plane’s passengers as being “unclean”.
More than 20 people were injured before security forces could contain the unrest. No passengers on the plane were hurt.
Police arrested dozens of people, whose cases are now making their way through Russian courts.
President Vladimir Putin blamed the West and Ukraine for the unrest, without providing evidence. Kyiv denied any role and the United States strongly condemned the violence.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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