Russian court sends 5 to jail over antisemitic riot at Dagestan airport in October
Men handed sentences ranging between 6 to 9 years for taking part in mob that stormed airport where flight arrived from Tel Aviv in hunt for ‘unclean’ passengers onboard
MOSCOW — A court in southern Russia on Friday sentenced five men to more than six years in prison each in the first convictions related to a mass antisemitic protest last October at an airport in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region.
The men, who were given sentences ranging from just over six years to nine years for engaging in rioting, did not admit guilt, the court in the Krasnodar region said. One protester was also found guilty of committing violence against a government official.
The trial was moved from Dagestan to Krasnodar due to the sensitivity of the case.
Last October, hundreds of anti-Israel protesters stormed an airport in the city of Makhachkala where a plane from Tel Aviv had just arrived in a spate of unrest in the North Caucasus over Israel’s war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas in Gaza.
Video footage showed the protesters, mostly young men, waving Palestinian flags, breaking down glass doors and running through the airport shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest).
The crowd converged on the airport after a message on a local Telegram channel urged Dagestanis to meet the “uninvited guests” in “adult fashion” and to get the plane and its passengers to turn around and fly somewhere else.
The hunt for Jews at the airport in Dagestan continues, to the soundtrack of “Allahu Akbar” screams. They even look into the plane’s engines, maybe someone is hiding there. Pogroms, a proud Russian tradition, now carried out by Muslim mobs running free with zero police presence pic.twitter.com/XaH3z9OvtH
— Boaz Arad 博雅 (@aradboaz) October 29, 2023
The channel, which was later banned by Telegram, did not use the word “Jew” but referred to the plane’s passengers as being “unclean.”
More than 20 people were injured before security forces could contain the unrest. No passengers on the plane were hurt.
Police arrested dozens of people, whose cases are now making their way through Russian courts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the West and Ukraine for the unrest, without providing evidence. Kyiv denied any role and the United States strongly condemned the violence.
Antisemitic violence has been on the rise in Dagestan since war broke out between Israel and Hamas following the Palestinian terror group’s October 7 massacre, which saw terrorists kill some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnap 251.
A terrorist attack in June targeting a synagogue and a church in Dagestan saw 20 people killed.
In July, Jewish graves in the region were destroyed, though authorities said their destruction was an accident.
