http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4DF1039F934A15753C1A961948260Prison for Ex-J.D.L. Chief in Bombing
By LEONARD BUDER
Published: October 27, 1987
LEAD: A former head of the Jewish Defense League was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in Federal prison for taking part in a series of ''terrorist bombings'' in the New York area since 1984 to protest Soviet treatment of Jews.
A former head of the Jewish Defense League was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in Federal prison for taking part in a series of ''terrorist bombings'' in the New York area since 1984 to protest Soviet treatment of Jews.
Among the incidents was a firebombing at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center on Oct. 20, 1986, the day of a scheduled performance by the Moscow State Symphony. The firebomb damaged the stage-door entrance but caused no injuries.
In sentencing the defendant, Victor Vancier, 30 years old, of Whitestone, Queens, Judge I. Leo Glasser of Federal District Court in Brooklyn sternly told him, ''You don't go bombing innocent people to make a point.''
He said he regarded Mr. Vancier as ''a danger to this community'' and, at the request of the Federal prosecutor, Charles E. Rose, he revoked Mr. Vancier's $1 million bail. According to the authorities, Mr. Vancier served as national chairman of the J.D.L. from April 1985 until November 1986. Two Others Sentenced
In separate sessions earlier in the day, Judge Glasser sentenced two other former members of the militant organization, founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane to combat anti-Semitism.
One of them, Murray Young, 60, of East Meadow, L.I., was sentenced to five years in prison. The other, Sharon Katz, 44, of West 57th Street in Manhattan, was given a suspended three-year prison sentence and six months of house arrest as part of a five-year probationary term.
''I have no justification for what I did,'' Mr. Vancier said before his sentence was imposed. He said he realized that his actions had not helped his cause. And he asked for a new chance to build a constructive life.
His court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Concannon, described his client as ''a tragic figure'' and ''an empty vessel but for his J.D.L. life.''
''It's fair to say he's a little bit nuts,'' the lawyer said. But he asked that Mr. Vancier be spared a term in prison, where he ''would be subjected to attacks and animosity.'' 'Utterly Lawless'
The judge told the defendants that what they had done was ''terribly wrong'' and ''utterly lawless.'' And he said Mr. Vancier had made similar assertions, about seeing the error of his illegal actions, on other occasions when being sentenced for similar crimes.
Mr. Vancier and Mr. Young pleaded guilty last August - along with another defendant, Jay Cohen, 24, of Forest Hills, Queens - to racketeering charges involving acts of bombing, arson, extortion and fraud. Each faced a possible maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
Mr. Cohen was found dead in a hotel room in the Catskills early last month after apparently taking an overdose of prescription drugs. Mr. Vancier said yesterday that he felt personally responsible for Mr. Cohen's death.
Miss Katz pleaded guilty solely to taking part in an incident at Lincoln Center, when a tear-gas grenade was thrown into the audience at the Metropolitan Opera House at the opening-night performance of the Moiseyev Dance Company in September 1986.
She said she carried what she thought was a ''stink bomb'' into the hall but denied throwing the grenade. Twenty people were injured.
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