The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation after the discovery of Stars of David, a symbol of the Jewish religion and the State of Israel, on several buildings in the French capital.
Stars of David were drawn with a blue stencil on several facades of 14th century buildings.e district in the south of Paris, an AFP journalist noted on Tuesday.
The investigation, opened for damage to the property of others aggravated by the fact that it was committed due to origin, race, ethnicity or religion, was entrusted to the district police station. , specified the prosecution, requested by AFP.
This offense is punishable by a maximum penalty of four years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros.
Since the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2,500 reports of anti-Semitic acts have been received in France on the Pharos reporting platform, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
On Sunday, French Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti reported more than 400 arrests for these “anti-Semitic acts”.
In a press release relayed on X (formerly Twitter), the mayor of XIVe borough, Carine Petit, denounced the tags as “anti-Semitic and racist acts”.
“This act of marking recalls the processes of the 1930s and the Second World War which led to the extermination of millions of Jews,” she denounced.
“There is clearly a desire to terrify among the people who did this,” the president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), Samuel Lejoyeux, told AFP.
Similar tags appeared last weekend in the Paris suburbs – in Vanves, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Aubervilliers and Saint-Ouen – where the stencils were accompanied by inscriptions such as “From the sea to the Jordan, Palestine will conquer” .
The mayor of Aubervilliers, Karine Franclet, denounced acts “in total contradiction with the fundamental values that we hold […]especially in the current context of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The town hall of Saint-Ouen, where the tags were discovered on Monday, made a report to the prosecutor. “The perpetrators must be prosecuted and punished by the courts with the greatest severity and intransigence,” commented Mayor Karim Bouamrane on X.
At the same time, the mayor of Petit-Quevilly near Rouen, Charlotte Goujon, told AFP on Tuesday that she had filed a complaint after the discovery last Thursday in a district of the city of anti-Semitic tags, some of which were aimed directly at her.