TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- An Israeli man convicted of throwing a pig's head at a mosque was sentenced to nine months in prison.
The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court sentenced Shimon Ben-Haim for throwing the pig's head into the courtyard of Tel Aviv's Hassan Bek mosque in August 2005, during a period of Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
His girlfriend, Victoria Shteiman, was sentenced to two months in jail as an accessory, Haaretz reported.
Ben-Haim tied an Arab scarf to the pig's head and wrote "Prophet Mohammed" on it, the court found. He also drew a crescent moon, an Islamic symbol, on each side of the scarf, or keffiyeh.
He then threw a bag containing the head over a fence and into the mosque's courtyard, Haaretz said. He and Shteiman then called a local TV station to report the incident.
Their acts "presented a real danger to the relations between the different groups in Israel," Judge Daniel Be'eri wrote in his sentence for religious desecration.
Israel's United Arab List political party criticized the sentence as light.
