A woman Jewish extremist was yesterday found guilty by an Israeli court of inciting sectarian clashes by putting up posters of the prophet Mohammed portrayed as a pig in the West Bank's strongly Muslim city of Hebron.
Tatiana Suszkin (26) wept as the verdict was read aloud in Jerusalem's district court. She was convicted of committing a racist act, supporting a terrorist organisation, attempting to give religious offence, and attempted vandalism. Suszkin was also convicted of endangering life by throwing rocks at Arab drivers.
She will be sentenced today and faces a maximum prison term of 26 years. After the hearing Suszkin told reporters: "I have no regrets for what I have done." Her lawyer, Mr Shmuel Casper, said he was hopeful that she would receive no more than a year in jail.
Suszkin, a Russian immigrant who moved to Israel six years ago, plastered the posters across twenty shop windows in the Palestinian-controlled sector of Hebron last June. Pigs are considered unclean by both Judaism and Islam.
The posters, which depicted Mohammed as a pig stamping on the Koran, provoked a burst of violence in the city, which is always tense due to the presence of some 500 Jewish settlers among its 130,000 Palestinians, and also around the Muslim world.
In Egypt a man charged with killing nine German tourists on a bus in September claimed that he was avenging the posters.
There were angry street protests in Bangladesh and Iran, and rulings by Muslim clerics that insulting the prophet should be punishable by death. Israeli religious and political leaders condemned Suszkin's actions and apologised to Muslims.
During her trial, Suszkin, a member of the illegal extremist anti-Arab group Kach, claimed that she suffered from "confusion and disturbances" and had been treated in psychiatric hospitals in her native Russia. She had twice returned to Russia since emigrating to Israel because of emotional problems.
Judge Zvi Segel said that freedom of expression did not give Suszkin the right to do what she did. "The accused does not have and never had the right to enter parts of Hebron populated only by Muslims and to paste these posters," he said.
Afterwards Suszkin tried to portray herself as a victim of the Israeli legal system, telling reporters: "It's a shame to see all the heavies get out, but small people like me don't."
At one point during the lengthy reading of the verdict the prosecutor handed her a page from his legal pad so that she could wipe her tears. The long-haired Suskin, wearing a long green dress, became red-faced when she tripped on stairs while being escorted out in leg shackles.
The verdict coincided with the first day of the holy festival of Ramadan, when Muslims fast between dawn and sunset.
Suszkin described another Jewish extremist, Avigdor Eskin, who also made a brief court appearance yesterday on charges of plotting to throw a pig's head among worshippers at Jerusalem's holiest Muslim shrine, the Al Aqsa mosque, during Ramadan, as "like my brother".
Eskin's appeal against his detention was rejected. Israeli police said that Eskin intended to inflame anti-Jewish sentiments among Arabs during Ramadan by carrying out the assault on the Al Aqsa mosque.
AFP adds from Jerusalem: The Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, moved closer to gaining parliamentary approval for his 1998 budget yesterday with a flurry of spending promises that will notably benefit Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories.
Striving to get his budget adopted before a midnight deadline tonight, Mr Netanyahu conceded scores of millions of dollars to meet demands by groups in his fractious eight-party coalition which had bridled at his plan for $600 million in across-the-board spending cuts.