Source: Khaleej Times/DPA
On March 27, 2006 DPA reported, "A 21-year-old man who injured nine people in a frenzied knife attack in a Moscow synagogue earlier this year was on Monday sentenced to 13 years in jail. Muscovite Alexander Koptsev was found guilty of attempting to commit multiple murder on ethnically motivated grounds but cleared of inciting ethnic hatred, news reports said. Koptsev, shouting anti-Semitic slogans, ran amok in the synagogue in the capital’s Bolshaya Bronnaya Street on January 11, raining blows with a hunting knife on worshippers until he was restrained by a rabbi. Handing down the verdict, the court took into account his absence of a previous criminal record and affliction with an eye disease and mental disorder. But the defendant was deemed sane at the moment of the crime, according to the verdict, which his lawyers said they would appeal. During the trial he stated anti-Semitic views while protesting his innocence, saying that 'the criminal code is written by Jews and the Jewish mafia, therefore I do not consider myself guilty.'"