06 March 2008
Six youths, aged between 17 and 25, from the Paris suburb of Bagneux have been arrested for allegedly beating up and sexually tormenting a 19-year-old Jewish man in February. The youths, who knew the victim, had falsely accused him of stealing from them in order to lure him into a trap, according to judicial sources. When he arrived at the apartment of one of his aggressors, the young man, identified only by his family name of Roumi, was handcuffed to a radiator and beaten. The aggressors scrawled ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘dirty faggot’ on the face of their victim. Later they forced him to swallow cigarette butts and to suck a condom on a stick. The man’s ordeal reportedly lasted nine and a half hours. He was later hospitalized ‘in a state of shock’. He lodged a complaint.
"We are shocked and outraged. We condemn such acts in the strongest term. Our city has values of tolerance, respect of differences, fight against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia," Bagneux City Hall said in a statement.
The head of the Jewish community of Bagneux, Philippe Ovadia, visited the young man’s family on Wednesday. The city is home to some 100 Jewish families. The six aggressors, arrested last week, face charges of group violence motivated by a person's ‘real or supposed race, religion or sexual orientation’, acts of torture, blackmail and theft. The president of the French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF, Richard Prasquier, said that although anti-Semitic attacks were down 30 per cent last year, the attack suggested that "anti-Semitic prejudice is still very present."
Two years ago, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was tortured to death by a gang from Bagneux, an anti-Semitic crime that shocked the country. Up to 30 people are under investigation over the killing, with the gang's ringleader, Youssef Fofana, to stand trial for murder before the end of the year. The Communist mayor of Bagneux, Marie-Hélène Amiable, declared on Wednesday that "one should not make a confusion between the two cases."
