A 38-year-old Strasbourg man, who frightened a Jewish graffiti artist and grabbed his paint cans to inscribe anti-Semitic tags, was sentenced Monday to six months in prison by the Strasbourg Criminal Court for public provocation to racial hatred and degradations.
The court matched his sentence, in accordance with the prosecution's requisitions, with the payment of 500 euros to the victim for non-pecuniary damage, as well as nearly a thousand euros in total in damages to associations having brought civil proceedings, such as SOS Racism and the Licra.
At the end of August, the graffiti artist, under contract with the metropolis of Strasbourg, had started producing a work on an electrical box in a district in the east of the city.
He was then taken to task because he was wearing a t-shirt with a printed motif featuring different names of cities and countries, including "Israel".
The defendant had forced him to change his T-shirt and give him his two spray cans with which he had written on the ground "forbidden to Jews" and "bitch".
The man claims to have "understood (his) error"
"I lived the worst three hours of my life", explained the victim at the hearing.
His lawyer Me Raphaël Nisand emphasized that, even in the absence of physical violence, what had happened was "unspeakable".
Already convicted on multiple occasions, the individual was released in October for extortion committed on the grounds of religion concerning these same facts, which had aroused great emotion at the time.
The prefect of Bas-Rhin, Josiane Chevalier, had notably condemned an “intolerable” act.
Apologizing several times at the hearing, the defendant assured to have "understood (his) error", evoking "an impulse" on the background of alcohol, separation with his partner, unsuccessful job search and videos on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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His lawyer, Me Élise Le Guennec-Schmitt, spoke of an “individual, isolated, thoughtless act and no propaganda”.
He was appearing in detention after being sentenced to eight months in prison in November for voluntarily spraying a nurse in the emergency room with his blood.
