February 20, 2008	Wednesday	Safar 12, 1429

JERUSALEM, Feb 19: A Tel Aviv court on Tuesday sentenced an Israeli lawyer to 12 years in prison after finding him guilty of defrauding dozens of Holocaust survivors of German compensation money.

The court also fined Yisrael Perry $5.5m over a string of charges, including stealing the equivalent of about $200m from survivors of Nazi concentration camps.

Perry had created an association purported to help Holocaust survivors obtain pension rights from West Germany’s social insurance institute in the early 1990s, the judge wrote in his ruling.—AFP