CHISINAU. Nov 14 (Interfax) - A court in Chisinau has slapped a seven-year prison sentence on a 25-year-old Moldovan villager for an attempt in Moldova's capital in August 2012 to throw a Molotov cocktail at a motorcade carrying German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Seven years is the maximum penalty for "malicious hooliganism," the offense Iurie Vilcov of Valea Perjei village in Taraclia district has been charged with, Interfax was told at the court on Wednesday.
Vilcov, who has more than one conviction on his record, is likely to spend altogether 13 years in jail as he is charged with one more offense, theft.
Prosecutors said he was in a state of mental depression and under the influence of marijuana during the Molotov cocktail incident on August 24, 2012, which occurred when Merkel was visiting Chisinau. The prosecutors claimed Vilcov had been a regular marijuana smoker.
Vilcov came up to a police cordon along the street where the motorcade was going to pass, took his Molotov cocktail out of his rucksack and tried to hurl it toward the approaching vehicles. A traffic policeman stopped him, and the bottle fell to the ground near them and burst into flames, but no one was hurt.
Vilcov said the purpose of the act was to draw public attention to allegedly unjust court verdicts. He claimed he had been falsely convicted in the past.