(JTA) — A juvenile court in northeastern France has suspended the eight-to-18-months prison sentences of five teenagers for toppling and breaking some 300 gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union, located in the Bas-Rhin region in Alsace in 2015. A Holocaust memorial monument on the cemetery property also was vandalized. Most of the gravestones have not yet been repaired due to the astronomical cost, the French news agency AFP reported.
The five are also each required to serve 140 hours of community service. Each defendant had faced up to seven years in prison. They all reportedly expressed regret for their actions during court hearings on Thursday and Friday.