The Larnaca District Court in Cyprus imposed fines of 750 euros on two sisters responsible for a racist attack on a Russian woman in October 2019, CNA reported.

In October 2019, three Cypriot women in Larnaca attacked Svetlana Zaitseva, a Russian woman who prevented them from escaping after they damaged a disabled man’s car in a parking lot. They shoved the woman, spat on her and insulted her, demanding her to “go home,” and advising her to go wash windows or dance in a cabaret. Zaitseva, a mother of three children who has lived in Cyprus for 20 years and has a Cypriot passport, told journalists at the time that she had never heard such profanity in her life.

The Cypriot public called the attack “racist,” the incident made headlines on Cypriot television, and the police and the Human Rights Center for Equality and Against Racism took up the case.

According to the case materials, three women with two children got out of the car and started insulting the Russian woman after she demanded them not to leave after the offense. Police obtained closed-circuit surveillance footage of the parking lot in downtown Larnaca, as well as other surrounding buildings. Investigators took statements from witnesses to the video, as well as from the owner of the damaged car.

The two women, sisters, 31 and 38, from a village near Nicosia, were charged with assault, public insult, threats, harassment, inflicting moral harm and offenses related to racism and xenophobia. According to unofficial information, one of the sisters is a teacher, the other is a child psychologist in a school.