A forty-year-old prosecuted for threatening a leader of the Vosges Jewish community on the telephone was sentenced Tuesday to three months' suspended imprisonment by the Epinal criminal court.
On October 14, a week after the Hamas attack in Israel, Martine Sibéoni, president of the Jewish community of Epinal and Remiremont, was contacted by a hidden number four times in the space of 10 minutes on her phone. .
On the other end of the line, someone threatened her:
“Are you the president of the Vosges Jewish community?
We’re going to blow up the synagogue this afternoon!”
“We know where you live”
,
“we are going to make you pay for the suffering caused to our people”
, added the voice.
An “amalgam” according to the public prosecutor
When contacted, the police identified the author of the phone calls: a father in his forties, with no criminal record, employed in a local company.
It was established that his line was used to make one of the four calls, the others having been made by a cell phone using a prepaid card belonging to his partner.
At the hearing, the man denies having made threatening remarks:
“I said: ‘Leave the Palestinian people alone’, that’s all
,” he assures.
Present at the hearing, Martine Sibéoni affirmed that
“the remarks were threatening”
.
“He probably didn’t realize how distressing it was
. ”
The public prosecutor, Frédéric Nahon, requested eight months in prison for
“repeated threats of crime against people because of religion”
.
“The defendant conflated the Jewish community with what is happening in Israel and Palestine
,” he noted.
France has the largest Jewish community in Europe
The man was, in addition to the three months suspended prison sentence, sentenced to complete a citizenship training course, was banned from carrying a weapon for five years and from having contact with the victim for three years.
The defendant's lawyer, Julien Hedon, pleaded for acquittal.
He considers the court's decision
“heartbreaking”
, considering that he
“demonstrated that it was materially impossible for (his) client to have repeated the facts”
.
He and his counsel reserve the right to appeal
“on principle”
within ten days.
France has the largest Jewish community in Europe, with around 500,000 people.
In 2023, the number of anti-Semitic acts there will have quadrupled compared to 2022.