Nov 23, 1994
In a courtroom rife with rancorous passion, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi was sentenced yesterday to 4 to 12 years in prison for kidnapping a Jewish teen-ager who disappeared from his family for two years.
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, the leader of a small Hasidic sect, was given the prison term after he declared fervently that he was the victim of the kind of "blood libel" that had "cost the lives of millions," and after the youth's mother spoke with equal intensity about losing her son to "people who control his mind."