Vandals desecrate hundreds of Jewish graves in anti-Semitic attack on French cemetery
French president describes attack as an 'odious and barbaric act' as authorities vow justice
Five adolescents aged 15 to 17 have been detained for questioning in eastern France over the vandalism of Jewish graves, a local prosecutor said yesterday.
All five are from the region of Sarre-Union in Alsace, where about 300 tombs were defaced and damaged on Thursday.
The youngest came forward after being shocked by the massive reaction across the country to the vandalism, prosecutor Philippe Vannier said.
"Apparently, he was very very affected by the scale of the reaction to this affair, including the statements from the highest state authorities," Vannier told reporters. The boy has denied any anti-Semitic motive, Vannier added.
"We don't know the motives of these adolescents who don't have past criminal records and we don't know of any ideological convictions that could explain their behaviour," he said. "They are very very shocked by the turn of events."
Police had cordoned off the isolated cemetery late on Sunday as crime scene investigators were sent from Strasbourg to the site.
"It's an image of desolation," president of the Alsace region Philippe Richert said, describing how Jewish steles, stone or wooden slabs often used for commemoration, were knocked down.
"One doesn't knock over heavy steles like that dating from the 19th century very easily. It was a deliberate act of destruction," he said.
French President Francois Hollande called the desecration of the graves an "odious and barbaric act" while Prime Minister Manuel Valls, writing on Twitter, described the events as "anti-Semitic and ignoble".
It is not the first time that a Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union has been targeted.
In 1988, around 60 Jewish steles were knocked over, and 54 tombs were wrecked in 2001.
News of the latest incident comes just over a month after an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jews in a kosher supermarket siege in Paris and less than 24 hours after a fatal shooting at a synagogue in Copenhagen.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday the incidents should inspire the "massive immigration" of European Jews to Israel.
But Valls urged otherwise. "My message to French Jews is the following: France is wounded with you and France does not want you to leave," Valls said.
"I regret Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks ... The place for French Jews is France."
Roger Cukierman, who is the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, said he was "fed up of all these anti-Semitic acts, in their different forms that we saw on January 9 in France, yesterday in Copenhagen and today in Alsace". Such "cowardly acts" showed a "lack of moral and ethical values".
