Israeli police on Monday arrested the fugitive leader of a neo-Nazi youth group as he returned to Tel Aviv from overseas, a police spokesman said.
Erik Bonite, who has Israeli nationality but is not Jewish, was arrested as he stepped off a plane at Ben Gurion airport, spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Bonite, nicknamed Ely the Nazi, fled the country in 2007. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in November 2008 after a Tel Aviv court found him guilty of commemorating Hitler's birthday - April 20 - at a ceremony where members of his group swore to defend "the white race up to the last drop of their blood".
The other seven gang members, aged 16 to 21 at the time and all from the former Soviet Union, were also sentenced to prison terms for "neo-Nazi activities" in Israel between 2005 and 2007. They were convicted of racist crimes and attacks against Asian immigrant workers, drug addicts, gays, and orthodox Jews.
Group members who called themselves Patrol 36 were also found guilty of defiling a synagogue in a Tel Aviv suburb and planning attacks on punk groups using explosives.
ABC News
January 04, 2011
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Eric is not Jewish?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/24/israelandthepalestinians
I thought being Jewish in Israel was today nix to do with religion, but maternal lineage..
"The group were Jewish immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union. They migrated under Israel's law of return, which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen.
One of the teenagers was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.
The court documents pointed to social adjustment difficulties as a factor behind the attacks.
The judge described the teens, all from Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv, as "terrible".
"The fact that they are Jews from the ex-Soviet Union and that they had sympathised with individuals who believed in racist theories is terrible," Gurfinkel said as he handed down his verdict.
The gang leader, Erik Bonite, known as Ely the Nazi, received the maximum sentence."
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