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A jury in Sioux Falls, S.D., returned to the courtroom late Thursday afternoon and delivered judgment on former Agriprocessors manager Sholom M. Rubashkin: Guilty on 86 of 91 possible counts.

Rubashkin, who is the 50-year-old son of company founder and president A. Aaron Rubashkin, was convicted of all possible money laundering and mail, wire and bank fraud charges. He was also convicted on 15 out of 20 counts of failing to provide timely pay to livestock auctions and providers.

According to a spokeswoman in the advertising department of The Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, the newspaper has not run or yet been requested to run any ad copy paid for by “Friends of Sholom Rubashkin.”
Rubashkin, the former day-to-day executive at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, recently had his federal trial moved from Iowa to Sioux [...]

The man appointed by the Postville City Council to serve as interim mayor accepted campaign contributions totaling more than $2,000 from members of the Rubashkin family, who founded and operated the beleaguered Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, site of a massive 2008 immigration raid.

A former Agriprocessors beef supervisor was sentenced today in federal court to three years in prison. The news comes on the same day that a former plant human resources employee pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraudulent immigration statement charges.

“As the supervising rabbi for all glatt kosher meat and strictly kosher poultry at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, I am responsible for the well-being of the slaughterers (shochtim) and supervising (mashgichim) rabbis,” said Weissmandl in an e-mail to Iowa Independent on Thursday. “To protect the integrity of the kashruth, their relationship is strictly with us. Under no circumstances can we permit that this relationship be compromised and thus is off limits to outside scrutiny, as is prescribed by Jewish law.”

Uri L’Tzedek, a grassroots Orthodox social justice initiative, has penned a letter to Aaron Rubashkin, founder of the Agriprocessors Corporation, expressing displeasure with the company’s ethical practices. The letter, which makes demands for federal minimum wages, workplace and worker safety and ethical treatment, has drawn the approval of hundreds of U.S. kosher meat consumers.
“We only [...]