The Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) has expressed shock and outrage at the sentencing of former chief executive officer and vice president at Agriprocessors Sholom Rubashkin to 27 years in prison. Rubashkin was also ordered to pay $27 million in restitution by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Linda R. Reade.

The RCE is an organization dedicated to meeting the religious and spiritual needs of Jewish communities in Europe.

“This is a blatant imbalance of justice,” said Rabbi Yisroel Yaakov Lichtenstein, Av-Beis-Din of the Federation of Synagogues in London and member Presidium of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE). “The doctrine of proportionality in sentencing seeks to limit arbitrary and capricious punishment in order to ensure that offenders are punished according to their “˜just desert’, and this is light years away from proportional sentencing.”

The RCE, and many other supporters in the Jewish community, felt that Rubashkin was already being singled out for special and undue attention when there was an attempt to deny bail on the grounds that the defendant could flee to Israel.

“Already at the bail stage we saw an outrageous bias against Rubashkin because he was a religious Jew,” added Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, Rabbi of the Mill Hill Synagogue in London. “This sentence merely compounds our earlier fears and smacks of sinister intent and utterly undermines the very foundations of fair justice for all upon which the United States of America has always taken immense pride.”

The RCE fully supports Rubaskin’s appeal and call upon the American judicial system to save itself from this grave inequity of justice and to allow for common sense and righteousness to prevail.