The Moscow City Court on Friday sentenced Alexander Koptsev, who injured nine people in a knife attack at a synagogue, to 16 years in prison after a second trial, court officials said.
The court also ordered Koptsev, who was 20 when he rampaged through the Chabad Synagogue in January, shouting and attacking worshippers before he was wrestled to the ground, to undergo psychiatric treatment at the facility where he will be imprisoned, a court spokeswoman said.
Koptsev had been convicted of attempted murder driven by racist motives in March and sentenced to 13 years in prison, but the Supreme Court overturned the conviction in June after appeals by both prosecutors, who wanted a longer sentence, and defense lawyers who claimed he was mentally unstable.
On Friday, the court convicted Koptsev of attempted murder and of inciting ethnic hatred, said the spokeswoman, who declined to give her name, citing court policy. The court had dropped the charge of inciting ethnic hatred in the earlier trial.
In his final statement before the verdict was issued, Koptsev said he repented and apologized to the victims and their families.
The chief rabbi of one of Russia's two largest Jewish organizations, Berel Lazar, hailed the verdict as a landmark decision, saying that, unlike so many similar cases, it recognized the attack was a hate crime.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, denied a report that Koptsev had been linked to the stabbing death of an ethnic Azeri in November. Emmin Gadzhiyev, 17, was attacked after he exited the Krasnogvardeiskaya metro station.
A witness identified images of the attacker caught on metro security cameras as Kopstev, Vremya Novostei reported Friday.
(AP, MT)
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