Three Bulgarian nationals suspected of spray-painting red hands on the Holocaust Memorial in Paris in May have been arrested in Bulgaria and Croatia. All three men are close to the far right.
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Thirty-five red hands were painted on the Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah Memorial in Paris last May. Tags with plaques bearing the names of the 3,900 men and women who helped save Jews during World War II.
Acts of vandalism that had caused strong emotion in the Jewish community in France. The Paris prosecutor’s office had opened a judicial investigation and pointed the finger at the responsibility of three suspects who had fled abroad and issued a European arrest warrant.
Seven years imprisonment
Three men were arrested, two in Bulgaria and one in CroatiaThe three suspects are involved in far-right circles. BulgariaAuthorities in Sofia are now seeking to identify their accomplices and instigators.
The investigation concerns facts of ” damage to the property of others committed in a group ” with the aggravating circumstance that they ” were committed because of real or supposed membership in an ethnic group, race or religion “If convicted, the three suspects face a possible seven-year prison sentence.
These acts of vandalism had aroused strong emotion up to the highest levels of the State. French President Emmanuel Macron had then denounced a ” memory impairment » victims of the Shoah and the Righteous and promised that the French authorities would be ” inflexible in the face of odious anti-Semitism “.
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