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CRIME

‘Anti-Semitic’ robbers target Jewish family near Paris

A Jewish family was beaten, held hostage and robbed in their home near Paris because of their religion, French authorities and anti-hate groups have said.

Published: 11 September 2017 10:36 CEST
'Anti-Semitic' robbers target Jewish family near Paris
The home of the victims, where they were beaten and held hostage. Screengrab/BFM TV

Three attackers burst into the house in the Paris suburb of Livry-Gargan late Thursday, cut off the electricity and confined three members of a Jewish family, beating them and threatening to kill them, until one of them managed to escape and alert the police, said anti-Semitism watchdog BNVCA.

It said the assailants told the three victims: “You are Jews, you have money. We take money from Jews to give to the poor.”   

One of the victims was Roger Pinto, the 78-year-old head of Siona, an association “defending the Jewish people and the state of Israel,” Pinto's lawyer, Marc Bensimon, said.  

Pinto was kicked several times in the head and throat, Bensimon said. The other two victims were Pinto's wife, who managed to sound the alarm, and Pinto's son.

The assailants made off with jewellery, cash and credit cards, the attorney said.    

Police said they had opened a formal inquiry into illegal detention, theft and extortion with violence motivated by the religious affiliation of the victims.   

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb promised a major effort to arrest those responsible “for this cowardly act (which) appears directly linked to the victims' religion”.   

“Everything will be done to identify and arrest those who carried out this foul attack,” he said in a statement.   

The BNVCA condemned what it called a “clearly anti-Semitic” crime.

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella grouping of French Jewish organisations, said “this horrible act is proof that Jews in France are particularly threatened in the street… and even in their homes.”   

French Jews, the largest community outside of the United States and Israel, have been leaving France at a steady pace for around a dozen years.   

Some 5,000 departures in 2016 add to the record 7,900 who left in 2015 and 7,231 in 2014. In total, 40,000 French Jews have emigrated since 2006.   

The community was shocked in 2006 by the kidnapping and brutal anti-Semitic killing of a 23-year-old Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in the Paris suburbs, which was followed by a shooting in a Jewish school in the southwest city of Toulouse in 2012.   

Experts and members of the Jewish community in France say that the terror attacks in recent years — including one at a kosher supermarket in January 2015 — are not the only reason people are leaving.   

Family, religious and economic reasons have also played a role in decisions to emigrate.

CRIME

French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

A 14-year-old girl has died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school locked down to protect itself from a knife attacker who lightly wounded two other girls, an official said on Friday.

Published: 20 April 2024 08:58 CEST
French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

The teenager “was rescued by teachers who were very fast to call the fire department. She died at the end of the afternoon,” education official Olivier Faron said.

The girl’s middle school in the village of Souffelweyersheim closed its doors on Thursday afternoon after a man stabbed two other girls aged 7 and 11 outside a nearby primary facility.

“Sadly this pupil underwent an episode of very high stress that led to a heart attack,” Faron said.

A mother outside the middle school on Friday morning said her son in first year of secondary had also been scared during the lockdown the previous day.

“Whereas in the primary school they made it more like a game, perhaps here it was a little too direct,” Deborah Wendling said.

“He thought there was an armed person in the school. They could hear doors slamming, but in fact it was just other classrooms locking down.”

Faron defended the teachers.

READ ALSO: Schoolgirl threatens teacher with knife as tensions rise in French schools

“There is no perfect solution,” he said.

But “we will analyse in depth what happened. If there are lessons to be taken from this, we will take them.”

The two girls hurt in the attack were discharged from hospital on Thursday evening with only light wounds.

Police have arrested the 30-year-old assailant, and a probe has been opened into “attempted murder of minors”, the prosecutor’s office said.

It was not immediately clear what had motivated him, but it did not appear to be “a terrorist act”, it said.

He was “psychiatrically fragile” and appeared to have stopped his medication.

The incident follows a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced measures to crack down on teenage violence in and around schools.

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