Four teenagers were convicted of vandalizing a Jewish cemetery, according to a June 25, 2008 article posted on the web site of the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda." The defendants faced the rarely applied charge of "damaging tombstones motivated by ethnic hatred"--most cemetery vandals are charged simply with "hooliganism." They were found guilty of vandalizing the cemetery on the night of October 7, 2007. One was confined to a psychiatric institution, the others got sentences of between two and two and a half years and were fined as well. The vandals damaged 61 gravestones the night of their rampage. Nevertheless, the sentence was unusually harsh in comparison to previous rulings in similar cases, where the vast majority of defendants got off with warnings or suspended sentences for "hooliganism."

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