A Moldovan couple arrested in Paris for allegedly scrawling Stars of David on a school building reportedly told investigators they were acting on orders from “an individual in Russia.”
The 33-year-old man and 29-year-old woman were apprehended last Friday after a witness reported seeing the pair tagging “a blue star” on a wall in a bohemian enclave of the French capital city, according to prosecutors.
When questioned by the police, the duo “declared they had committed this offense on the orders of a third party,” namely “an individual from Russia,” reported the French broadcaster Europe1, citing an unnamed source.
No additional information on the identity of the alleged Russian mastermind was immediately available.
The Moldovan nationals were booked into an administrative detention center on a preliminary charge of damage aggravated by the fact that it was committed because of their origin or religion.
The couple, who have been living in France illegally, will likely face deportation to their home country if convicted.
The pair’s arrests come after some 60 blue Stars of Davis were drawn on multiples’ buildings in Paris’ 14th and 15th arrondissement. The city’s public prosecutor said that the “authors of the multiple tags observed Tuesday had not yet been identified.”
A criminal investigation has been launched into the graffiti, which Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo decried as “despicable.”
“Antisemitic tags were discovered in Paris,” Hidalgo posted on social media this week. “Faced with these despicable acts, we contacted the public prosecutor to identify, prosecute and sentence the perpetrators. Antisemitism has no place in our Republic.”
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne echoed the mayor’s words in a speech to the National Assembly, saying that she condemned “these despicable acts with absolute firmness.”
The prosecutor’s office, however, has stopped short of labeling the graffiti antisemitic, saying in a statement that it had not yet been determined whether the vandalism was “for the purpose of insulting the Jewish people, or claiming membership,” citing the fact the stars had been spray-painted in blue rather than yellow — the color of the Jewish star that Nazis forced European Jews to wear during World War II.
Paris prosecutors were also looking into a chilling video that emerged on social media Wednesday, showing a group of youngsters in the city’s metro chanting: “F–k the Jews and f–k your mother, long live Palestine. We are Nazi and proud of it.”
