A court issued charges on Sunday against the suspected leader of a cell of neo-Nazis in the city of Petach Tikvah, 23-year-old Dmitri Bogotich.

Open gallery view Members of a neo-Nazi gang who were arrested in Israel in 2007. Credit: Reproduction / Tomer Appelbaum

As part of his neo-Nazi activities, Bogotich has been charged with incitement to racism, violence, disseminating and propagating a philosophy of racism, and acting it out in practice.



The accused and the other members of the gang brutally attacked dozens of people, who were only passers-by and previously unknown to their assailants, purely on the basis of their skin color or membership in a different national or ethnic group.



The victims of the neo-Nazi gang were Asians, Jews, dark-skinned people, foreign workers, and others who fell prey to the group by happenstance. Bogotich and the group even videotaped themselves committing these assaults in order to publicize them over the internet.



The rest of the members of the gang were charged back in 2007 and were meted out various sentences. Bogotich was not charged until now because immediately after being interrogated by the police, he left the country, and was only recently extradited from Kyrgyzstan.

Responding to Sunday's indictment, the State Prosecutor's Office said they would work "determinately against any act of incitement which encourages hate against the other and differentwhile abusing the freedom of thought and expression provided in a democratic country to verbally or physically injure others."