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MUSEUM

France hands over ‘Jewish museum shooter’

French police handed over Mehdi Nemmouche to their counterparts in Brussels on Tuesday. Nemmouche is suspected of shooting dead four people at a Jewish museum in the Belgian capital in May.

France hands over 'Jewish museum shooter'
Mehdi Nemmouche, the suspect in the Jewish museum shooting in Belgium has been handed over to authorities in Brussels. Photo: AFP

A spokeswoman for the Belgian police told AFP that Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent, "has arrived" in Brussels.

"He will be interrogated," added spokeswoman Tine Hollevoet, who declined all further details.

France's final appeals court last week cleared his extradition for questioning over the May 24 killings of a Jewish couple, a Frenchwoman and a Belgian man at the downtown Brussels museum.

Nemmouche initially had filed an appeal against his extradition but then dropped his objection after guarantees that he would not be sent on to another country such as Israel from Belgium, according to his lawyer.

The shooting – the first such attack in Brussels in three decades – raised fears of a resurgence of anti-Semitic violence in Europe and of terror attacks from foreign fighters returning from Syria.

Nemmouche had spent more than a year fighting with Islamic extremists in Syria.

He was arrested on May 30 in the southern French city of Marseille after being spotted in a bus from Brussels.

A revolver and Kalashnikov rifle were found in his luggage, ressembling weapons caught on a museum video-camera, as was a portable camera

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ISRAEL

Germany’s Jews call for protection amid Israel-Palestinian clashes

Germany's Jewish community on Wednesday urged the country to ramp up protection after Israeli flags were burnt in front of synagogues amid escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Germany's Jews call for protection amid Israel-Palestinian clashes
A police car outside a synagogue in Bonn on Wednesday. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Oliver Berg

Police arrested 16 people in two separate incidents at synagogues in the cities of Bonn and Münster, where Israeli flags were set on fire late Tuesday.

Josef Schuster, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, blamed Hamas for the escalating conflict in Israel and said tensions were spilling over.

“Israel and Jews as a whole are subjected to hatred and incitement, particularly on social media. The threat to the Jewish community is growing,” he said.

Pointing to the flag-burning incidents, he said “the protection of Jewish institutions must be raised”.

“We expect from the people in Germany solidarity with Israel and the Jewish community,” added Schuster.

READ ALSO: Merkel ‘shamed’ by growing anti-Semitism in Germany

Anti-Semitic crimes have risen steadily in Germany in recent years, with 2,032 offences recorded in 2019, up 13 percent on the previous year, according to government figures.

A German court in December handed down a life sentence to the assailant behind a deadly far-right attack last year that nearly became the country’s worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.

After failing to storm a synagogue, the gunman shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop.

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