Courts in Riga wound up two trials stemming from crimes directed against the Jewish community, according to UCSJ's Baltic Bureau. In early March, the Riga Regional Court ruled that 24-year old Andris Jordans should be sent to prison for a year for intolerance towards other nationalities. He was charged after participating in a discussion "The Problems of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and Xenophobia in Latvia," during which he announced that Jews and Gypsies are not people.

In another trial this month, Rolands Gobins and Vyacheslav Fadeyev were convicted of vandalizing the graves of the Jewish sage Zanis Lipke and were sentenced to prison for three years. They stole a bronze bas-relief from the monument that was erected by the Jewish community. They claimed in court that they did not know whose monument it was and were interested only in selling the precious metal for money.

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