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CRIME

French police probe knife attack for anti-Semitism

A young Jewish woman has been stabbed in her home in the French city of Lyon, prosecutors said, suspecting anti-Semitism as the motive for the attack.

French police probe knife attack for anti-Semitism
The residential building where a Jewish woman was stabbed at her home in Lyon. Photo: PACHOUD/AFP.

Police are treating the attack as attempted murder, they said, adding that the woman’s life was not in danger and no arrest had been made.

“This act could have anti-Semitism as its motive,” the prosecutors’ office in the southeastern city said late Saturday.

A police source told AFP that, according to the woman’s statement, she opened her door to a person who rang the doorbell and then stabbed her twice. Dressed in dark clothes and with their face partly concealed, the attacker then fled the scene.

A swastika — a symbol much used in Nazi Germany and by neo-Nazis —  was found scrawled on her door, the source said, but police had been unable to determine whether it had been put there ahead of the attack.

The regional branch of the CRIF, the representative council of Jewish institutions in France, quickly condemned the stabbing, saying it had “prompted great concern in the Jewish community”.

CRIF president Richard Zalmati also urged “caution”, saying it was up to the judiciary to determine whether there had been an anti-Semitic motive to the attack.

The victim’s lawyer, Stephane Drai, told the BFMTV broadcaster that her family’s Jewish faith was known in the neighbourhood.

Since an attack by Hamas against Israel on October 7 that left 1,400 dead, there have been 857 anti-Semitic acts in France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said last week, and 425 people arrested.

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CRIME

French cinema boss on trial for sexual assault

The head of France's top cinema institution Dominique Boutonnat denied sexually assaulting his godson as he went on trial Friday in a case that has led to calls for him to step down.

French cinema boss on trial for sexual assault

The trial comes as French cinema reels from a renewed #MeToo reckoning that has seen several big names, including acting legend Gerard Depardieu, accused of sexual abuse.

READ ALSO: French actor Gérard Depardieu to be tried for sexual assault in October

Activists have denounced Boutonnat’s continued leadership of the National Centre of Cinema (CNC), whose role includes overseeing measures to curb sexual violence in the industry.

His godson accuses him of trying to masturbate him during a holiday in Greece in 2020 when he was 19.

“I looked at him to find my godfather and that’s when I saw someone completely different… It was someone using me to masturbate,” the godson, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court.

Boutonnat responded in court that it was his godson who had initiated the situation and kissed him.

“I feel bad about leaving an ambiguous situation, but to say there was a sexual assault is false,” he told the court.

He was placed under investigation in February 2021 but still reappointed by the government as head of the CNC in July 2022.

Training to prevent abuse has in recent months become obligatory for films seeking public funding via the CNC.

The CNC told AFP that the case against Boutonnat came from “the private sphere” and had no relation to its activities.

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