A 58-year-old Pole was sentenced Monday, February 1 to one year in prison, including three months with probation, by the Mulhouse court for having drawn a dozen anti-Semitic tags in the city.
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At the end of November, the discovery of these inscriptions, "
Jew: Merd
", on several buildings in the city center had aroused great emotion.
One of the tags had been made on the stele erected in memory of Jacob Kaplan, chief rabbi of France from 1955 to 1981 and rabbi in Mulhouse between 1922 and 1929. “
It is a justified decision.
The court has rightly recognized the racist and anti-Semitic nature of these tags,
”said Sacha Cahn, lawyer of the Israelite Consistory of Haut-Rhin, who had brought a civil action.
The consistory was awarded 1,000 euros in damages for moral prejudice.
The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra) and the SOS Racisme association also each received 600 euros.
The city of Mulhouse has obtained 5,382 euros in compensation for material damage.
The Urban Violence Brigade of the Haut-Rhin departmental security had viewed hundreds of hours of video surveillance images to identify the author of the tags, already known to the police for cases of violence.
The man had admitted the facts in custody, and had justified his gesture by his support for the Palestinian cause.
At the hearing, he expressed his “
shame
”, and explained that he had taken action after being “
stolen three bikes
”, according to his comments reported by the newspaper
L'Alsace
.