The man suspected of having attacked on March 1 a sixty-year-old wearing a kippah, who was leaving a synagogue in Paris, saw his police custody lifted on Wednesday afternoon to be taken to the psychiatric infirmary of the police headquarters. , indicated the prosecution, requested by AFP.
A psychiatric assessment concluded that his state of health “was not compatible with his continued custody,” the prosecution said.
“Police custody will be resumed, at the end of this observation period, if he is not subject to hospitalization.”
The suspect, born in 1992, was arrested and placed in police custody on Wednesday morning in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, for violence followed by incapacity not exceeding eight days, committed due to religion.
During the hearing, he admitted to having “hit the victim, but indicated that he had acted in self-defense,” said the public prosecutor.
The attack took place on Friday around 5:30 p.m. rue des Orteaux, in the 20th arrondissement.
The young man is suspected of having hit and caused the victim to fall, who lost “briefly consciousness” before fleeing, according to the prosecution.
A witness also reported hearing the attacker insult him as a “dirty Jew,” adds the same source.
“Psychological trauma”
When Marco, 62, “was insulted as he was, he felt guilty for not having been able to react to these words of incredible violence,” his lawyer, Corinne, told AFP. Serfati-Chetrit.
The suspect told him “that he was a killer, because he was Jewish, that he was killing people in Gaza.”
“This is the first time that he has been attacked in this way”, underlines his lawyer, “and his psychological trauma is even greater than his physical damage”.
Also read: “My children wear a cap on their yarmulke”: the disrupted lives of French Jews facing anti-Semitism
The same day, the Minister of the Interior asked the prefects to strengthen protection measures for the Jewish community, particularly around schools and places of worship, taking into account “tensions in the Middle East”.
The next day, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, denounced a “new anti-Semitic attack” and an “unspeakable act”.
The investigation made it possible to make a connection with another case in the same neighborhood, in December 2020, indicated a source close to the case: the suspect had already threatened to kill a Jewish family, “stigmatizing them because of their religion,” continued the source close to the matter.
The defendant was also convicted in September 2022, in particular for violence with weapons which did not result in total incapacity for work.