A district court in Sweden found three men guilty of attempted arson against the Jewish synagogue in Sweden’s second-largest city of Gothenburg last year.
Two of the men, aged 24 years old and 22 years old, were sentenced to two years in prison for their part in the Molotov cocktail attack, while a third 18-year-old was sentenced to 15 months in prison after the court determined the attack was a hate crime.
“The crime had the clear goal of threatening, harming, and violating members of the synagogue and the Jewish community more generally,” the court wrote in its judgement. “The crime therefore had a hate motive.”
As Breitbart News reported, the attack last year followed a week of anti-Israel violence in the city.
The attack occurred around the same time as a demonstration in the heavily migrant-populated city of Malmö, where a group of around 200 demonstrators had protested the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Participants at the event chanted anti-Semitic rhetoric, declaring: “We have announced the intifada from Malmö. We want our freedom back, and we will shoot the Jews.”
Prosecutor said the convicted men, “together and in agreement with a number of unknown persons, started fires by throwing several bottles of burning gas or similar liquid to cars parked outside the synagogue of the property belonging to the Jewish Assembly in Gothenburg as well as neighbouring property. The cars belonged to members of the Jewish Assembly.”
All three pleaded innocent. They were the only people charged.
The 22-year-old Palestinian had his asylum application turned down following the Dec. 9 attack and will be deported after serving his sentence. The others, aged 19 and 24, have Swedish residency permits.
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