6 Held in Anti-Semitic Attack in France

[sereia 0]

6 Held in Anti-Semitic Attack in France]By INGRID ROUSSEAU

Font Scale: Posted 05 March 2008 @ 04:24 pm ESTIBTimes RSS Print E-Mail digg Del.icio.us

PARIS (AP) - Six people kidnapped and tortured a Jewish teenager by punching and kicking him and writing "dirty Jew" on his forehead, judicial officials said Wednesday.

The 19-year-old victim met with his six alleged attackers, who ranged in age from 17 to 28, in the Paris suburb of Bagneux to try to settle an argument about a missing cell phone and camcorder, officials from the prosecutor's office in Nanterre said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

They said the six held the victim for about nine hours, taunted him for being Jewish, and said he was gay. They allegedly forced him to eat cigarette butts and scrawled anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual insults on his forehead.

The victim, whose identity has not been released, suffered slight injuries.

The alleged attackers have been detained and investigators filed preliminary charges against them. The preliminary charges include committing "acts of torture or barbarism" and "kidnapping by a gang," the judicial officials said.

The Bagneux City Hall said in a statement that officials were "shocked and outraged" by the attack. The suburb was the site of a 2006 attack against another young French Jew, Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed by a gang.

The president one of France's leading Jewish organizations, the Representative Council of Jewish Organizations in France, said anti-Semitic attacks in the nation were down 30 percent last year. But Richard Prasquier said the new attack suggests that "anti-Semitic prejudice is still very present."

The head of an organization that tallies anti-Semitic crimes in France, the BNVCA, said many recent victims, including the 19-year-old in last month's attack, were not religious Jews and had little connection with the Jewish community.

"The fact of having a Jewish name was enough for these aggressors to identify him as one, and to harass him," Sammy Ghozlan said.

France has western Europe's largest population of Jews and Muslims. The nation faced a surge in anti-Semitic crime starting in 2000 after tensions between Israelis and Palestinians flared up in the Middle East.

Edited March 8, 2008 by sereia

[Nagishkaw 510]

Disgusting.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I read about this in Haaretz last week -- it's just appalling.

More details here:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961212.html

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Agreed - an appalling incident.

[Cécy 44]

I don't understand how people can hate each othe like that, how they can do such stupid thing.

In France it seems that quite too often it's the young and restless population that always causes this kind of trouble. We need to get them busy...

[mawilson 2,133]

The suburb of Bagneux? Isn't that the place where the riots broke out last year (or was it 2006?)

Anyone want to guess the attackers' nationality?

[sandinista! 1,816]

The suburb of Bagneux? Isn't that the place where the riots broke out last year (or was it 2006?)

Anyone want to guess the attackers' nationality?

the haaretz article wom already posted lists the six as "two come from Muslim homes, two are "fully" French, and another two are African and Portuguese immigrants.", so there's no need to guess anything. haaretz doesn't mention skin color in this case, but in the previous halimi case mentioned in the article, the majority of men involved in that hideous case were black, of west african descent. same case in the 2005 riots, where the majority of rioters were actually of west african descent, as opposed to north. not that it has anything to do with anything whatsoever, since europe hardly needs to outsource vicious attacks based on ethnic hatred to immigrants, since they continue to show the rest of the world they are more than capable of producing their own monsters too. i don't know where bagneux is in relation to clichy sous bois where the 2005 riots originated.

[Ken y Leidys 20]

The suburb of Bagneux? Isn't that the place where the riots broke out last year (or was it 2006?)

Anyone want to guess the attackers' nationality?

This line of thinking simply perpetuates this sort of societal disease. Wake up! Hatred is hatred.