A Moscow court has found prominent Russian-Israeli blogger and web pioneer Anton Nosik guilty of extremism and fined him half a million rubles ($8,000) over a blog post titled Wipe Syria Off The Face Of The Earth.
The Presnensky district court ruled that Nosik had incited hatred or hostility toward Syrians in his October 1, 2015, post, but the court declined to give him a prison sentence because of "mitigating circumstances."
The judge noted that Nosik is the father of a small child and does not have a criminal record.
Prosecutors had asked for Nosik to be jailed for two years.
Nosik denied the charge of extremism throughout his trial, but stood by his blog post, which was published after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes in Syria on September 30, 2015.
In his blog post, Nosik said he "warmly welcomes" any bombing in Syria regardless of the loss of civilian life or infrastructure because he deems Syria a threat to Israel.
After the trial on October 3, he told Interfax he intended to appeal his fine.