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 Six Accused Of Attack On Gay Jewish Teen
by The Associated Press
Posted: March 6, 2008 - 1:00 pm ET
(Paris) Six people kidnapped and tortured a
Jewish teenager by punching and kicking him and writing "dirty Jew'' and
"fag" on his forehead, judicial officials say.
The 19-year-old victim met with his six alleged
attackers, who ranged in age from 17 to 28, in the Paris suburb of Bagneux to
try to settle an argument about a missing cellphone and camcorder, officials
from the prosecutor's office in Nanterre said. The officials spoke on the
condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
They said the six held the victim for about nine
hours, taunted him for being Jewish, and said he was gay. They allegedly forced
him to eat cigarette butts and scrawled anti-Semitic and anti-gay insults on his
forehead.
The victim, whose identity has not been released,
suffered slight injuries.
The alleged attackers have been detained and
investigators filed preliminary charges against them. The preliminary charges
include committing ``acts of torture or barbarism'' and ``kidnapping by a
gang,'' the judicial officials said.
The Bagneux City Hall said in a statement that
officials were ``shocked and outraged'' by the attack. The suburb was the site
of a 2006 attack against another young French Jew, Ilan Halimi, who was
kidnapped, tortured and killed by a gang.
The president one of France's leading Jewish
organizations, the Representative Council of Jewish Organizations in France,
said anti-Semitic attacks in the nation were down 30 per cent last year. But
Richard Prasquier said the new attack suggests that ``anti-Semitic prejudice is
still very present.''
The head of an organization that tallies
anti-Semitic crimes in France, the BNVCA, said many recent victims, including
the 19-year-old in last month's attack, were not religious Jews and had little
connection with the Jewish community.
``The fact of having a Jewish name was enough for
these aggressors to identify him as one, and to harass him,'' Sammy Ghozlan
said.
France has western Europe's largest population of
Jews and Muslims. The nation faced a surge in anti-Semitic crime starting in
2000 after tensions between Israelis and Palestinians flared up in the Middle
East.
©365Gay.com 2008
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