A man suspected of attacking a Jewish sixty-year-old in Paris five days ago was arrested this Wednesday, March 6. The victim, injured by the violent blows, filed a complaint and an investigation is underway.
A man suspected of being the perpetrator of an anti-Semitic attack in Paris was arrested this Wednesday, March 6. The suspect is said to be behind the beatings against a sixty-year-old leaving a synagogue near rue des Orteaux, in the 20th arrondissement of the capital according to details from AFP, in the post- noon on Friday March 1st. Having “fled on foot” after the attack according to several sources close to the investigation, he had been wanted for five days.
The victim of the anti-Semitic attack, a man in his sixties, recounted the scene to BFMTV. “I came out of the synagogue, I sat on the edge of the synagogue sidewalk and I saw a person pass by who looked at me fixedly, who seemed a little excited.” The suspect returned a few minutes later and called out to the victim, according to the latter’s testimony: “Are you the one killing people in Gaza?” “I don’t kill anyone, I’ve never killed anyone,” said the man who was wearing a kippah on his head. It was after that the sixty-year-old was hit: “He punched me and headbutted me and afterward, I lost consciousness.” The Paris prosecutor’s office indicates for its part that the attacker “insulted the victim as a ‘dirty Jew’ while punching and kicking him several times” according to a source close to the investigation. Only two days after the attack, the victim told BFMTV “not feeling in France”: “It makes me think of the Second World War, it’s the return of Nazism.”
The blows were such that the victim had to be treated for a “fractured nose and tooth” according to the mayor of the 20th arrondissement of Paris. The attacked and injured man filed a complaint upon leaving the hospital according to information from Le Parisien. An investigation was opened for violence followed by incapacity for work (ITT) not exceeding eight days due to religion and entrusted to the XXème police station. It was as part of this investigation that the suspect was arrested.