A 58-year-old Pole, former soldier in the Red Army, alleged author of a dozen anti-Semitic tags in Mulhouse, including a line on a stele erected in memory of the former chief rabbi of France Jacob Kaplan, was arrested on Tuesday , we learned from a source close to the investigation.
The Haut-Rhin departmental security brigade for urban violence viewed hundreds of hours of CCTV footage to identify this man, known to the police for cases of violence, the same source said. .
The suspect was still present near the places where anti-Semitic tags had been found since early November, investigators managing to accurately reconstruct his whereabouts.
Of Polish nationality, he was taken into police custody and should be brought before the public prosecutor on Wednesday morning.
"Support for the Palestinian cause" ...
The man admitted to being the author of the tags, justifying his gesture by his support for the Palestinian cause, the same source added.
The discovery of these inscriptions on several buildings in the city center had aroused great emotion in Mulhouse.
The prefect of Haut-Rhin, Louis Laugier, had thus strongly condemned these actions, supporting the Jewish community and the family of Jacob Kaplan, chief rabbi of France from 1955 to 1981 and who had held his very first post as rabbi. in Mulhouse, from 1922 to 1929. Several complaints had been filed, including one by the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra).