13-09-2007 / France
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France – Three Vandals Convicted of Desecrating Jewish Graves
On 13th September 2007, a French court convicted three persons of spraying swastikas and antisemitic epithets on gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in the village of Herlischeim in Western France in April 2004. The three admitted to vandalizing 117 gravestones and monuments marking the occasion of the anniversary of Hitler's death.
The judges sentenced the gang's leader, Emanuel Risé, 37, to two-and-a-half years in prison. His two accomplices, Laurent Boulangé, 27 and Laurent Paterscmidt, 28, were sentenced to one-and-a-half years and six months in prison respectively. Boulangé and Paterschmidt had worked under Risé for a security company. The three were also convicted of raising the Nazi flag in a cemetery in the village of Hartmansvilersopf and of smashing Muslim gravestones.
"I apologize to the entire Jewish community. I made a terrible mistake, and I bear responsibility for the results", said Paterschmidt outside the courtroom. Risé, for his part, said in the course of the trial that he had been fascinated by the "order and discipline" that had existed in Nazi Germany, but now he considers them "absurd".
The prosecutor at the trial, Pascal Schultz, said before the sentence had been read out that, "The punishment is designed to calm the Jewish and Muslim communities, and should remind all of us of the basic values of the French Republic".
Source:
http://www.ynet.co.il/
Date: September 13, 2007
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