Riga Regional Court sentenced one of 68 Old Riga riots participants – Arturs Sternbergs – to 100 hours of community service on August 13.

Sternbergs is accused of participating in the Old Riga riots in 2009. Sternbergs is one of the first 68 people that were sentenced by the court.

At first, it was planned to include Mareks Laizans as an accomplice in this case, who did not show up to court hearings multiple times. The court then decided to initiate a separate case against Laizans – he is currently wanted by the police.

Sternbergs admitted committing the crime, but Laizans previously denied the accusations.

The court divided the so called January 13 criminal proceedings into separate parts.

According to previous statements of press secretary of the Prosecutor General’s office Laura Pakalne, the criminal proceedings divided accusations against six individuals that avoided pre-court investigations and whose whereabouts were unknown.

Laizans and Sternbergs are two of those six people, because their whereabouts were previously unknown.

As it is known, on January 13, 2009, around 10 000 people gathered for a protest demonstration at Dome Square to demand the dissolution of the Saeima in a non-violent way.

After the protest demonstration, Old Riga was shaken by riots – windows of a number of buildings were smashed, including the Saeima building; a Latvijas Balzams store was robbed, Filings musical store was also heavily damaged. Several hundreds of young people participated in the riots, many of them were drunk. These «people» terrorized Old Riga for several hours.

126 people were detained. As a result of the clashes near the Saeima building, medics provided first aid to more than 30 people; 28 people were delivered to nearby hospitals with different injuries, four people refused to be hospitalized. Police officers were also injured in the clashes.

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