The sad epic of Agriprocessors lurches toward closure with the vice president of the kosher slaughterhouse being found guilty of fraud – just an appetizer of the feast that’s being served up for this dude. From the NYT:
A federal jury on Thursday convicted the former manager of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, which was the site of a major immigration raid, on 86 of 91 financial fraud charges.
Jurors returned the verdict against the manager, Sholom Rubashkin, 50, on its second day of deliberations after the nearly monthlong trial.
Mr. Rubashkin faces a sentence that could total hundreds of years in prison and a second federal trial on 72 immigration charges.
From the highly publicized ICE raids in May 2008, to nine thousand child labor violations leveled at Agriprocessors, to the evicted Palauans workers who were innocent bystanders in the tragedy, this story is thick with terrible twists and turns — and it’s hard to feel much except relief that it’s slowly coming to an end.
If you want to catch up on the details of this octopus-narrative, Fair Food Fight’s coverage of the Federal smackdown on Agroprocessors was fairly extensive last fall. (In particular, we remain intrigued whether the Agriprocessors tragedy and the conviction of Sholom Rubashkin might actually bring about stricter social justice standards in kosher certification.)
