Last update - 00:00 18/06/2007
Czech court convicts Israeli for grenade attack on Prague casino
By The Associated Press
An Israeli citizen has been sentenced to five years in prison for carrying out a bomb attack in 2004 on a casino owned by reputed Israeli crime figure Assaf Abutboul, an official said Monday.
Judge Bohuslav Horky said Prague Municipal Court on Monday convicted Yaakov Mushaylov of being a threat to the public, and sentenced him to five years in prison.
Abutboul was not injured in the attack and left the country a few days later. His casino has since closed.
Judge Horky said Mushaylov will serve his term in an Israeli prison and has been expelled from the Czech Republic indefinitely.
He was extradited to the Czech Republic for trial in January 2006 under the condition that he serve his prison term in Israel, where he had lived since immigrating from the former Soviet Union.
Moyshalov was arrested in September 2004 in Israel for throwing a hand grenade under a car in front of the Royal Prague Casino Hotel the previous month. The car was carrying three passengers, among them underworld figure Assaf Abutboul who is linked with Israeli crime leader Ze'ev Rosenstein.
The blast lightly injured 18 bystanders, most of them tourists from Britain, Germany and the United States.
Then Czech Prime Minister-elect Stanislav Gross termed the attack "a case of gangs settling accounts." Abutboul's father, Felix, was murdered two years earlier in the same spot, after which Assaf inherited his joint ownership in the hotel.