Siberia Police Arrest Neo-Nazi Leader

By JTA February 11, 2013

Prosecutors in Siberia reportedly have indicted a Russian citizen of inciting to violence against Jews and quoting texts by Adolf Hitler.

The Russian news agency Interfax reported on Monday that the 65-year-old man from Minusinsk in the Krasnoyarsk region was the founder of an anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi cell called “Minin and Pozharski People’s Militia.”

Since 2011, the man, who was not identified in the report, held regular meetings of his organization at various apartments around town, Interfax reported. The details of the indictment were posted on the official website of the regional prosecutor’s office.

The man was indicted for making appeals for public disorder; calling for violence against Jews and quoting passages from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf manuscript, which is officially banned in Russia, according to the Interfax report.

The defendant faces charges of making appeals for public disorder and inciting ethnic hatred, punishable by up to two years in prison for each charge.

In a separate incident, a leaflet calling for the Jews of the Siberian city of Abakan to report to a local train station for deportation was discovered on the front door of the city’s Jewish community center last month, according to a report by AEH, the Russian Agency for Jewish News. “Those who fail to report for deportation will be shot,” the leaflet reportedly read.

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