French teens charged with anti-Semitic rape in attack condemned by political leaders

From France 24 and the Daily Mail

Two teenage boys were charged with the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a suspected anti-Semitic attack in a Paris suburb that has raised tensions in France ahead of snap parliamentary elections. French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday denounced the “scourge of anti-Semitism”, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused the “extreme left” of “instrumentalising” the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The suspected anti-Semitic attack in Courbevoie, a northwestern Paris suburb, has sent shockwaves in France in the run-up to a general election that could bring the far-right National Rally to power for the first time.

An investigating source said: ‘The girl went out with her parents’ permission on Saturday at 3pm to meet her current boyfriend. Investigators heard how the gang grabbed her while she was sitting in Courbevoie’s Henri Regnault square with her boyfriend and dragged her to a derelict warehouse in the nearby La Defense district to carry out the attack.

The suspects beat her and “forced her to have anal and vaginal penetration, fellatio, while uttering death threats and anti-Semitic remarks”, a police source told AFP. . .  as the ex-boyfriend reportedly accused the victim of ‘hiding her Jewish religion’ from him.

‘A third minor then joined them, and insulted the young girl about her religion, calling her a dirty Jew.’

According to the girl’s initial witness statement, she was beaten, thrown to the ground, and photographed using mobile phones. The boys allegedly said they would use the images to blackmail her, before saying they would burn her, while placing a lighter by her face.

Various sex acts were then performed on the girl, and she was told she ‘would be killed’ if she spoke to police.

One of the attackers is said to have asked the girl to return the next day to give him 200 euros – about £170 – as part of a blackmail plot.

Investigators allegedly found anti-Semitic comments and images, including that of a burned Israeli flag, on the boy’s phone. One of his friends reportedly told police that he had hit the girl because she said bad things about Palestine.

According to further reports in the French media, the boys all come from the neighbouring suburb of Rueil-Malmaison.

Police set out to detain the attackers after a gynaecological examination at a local hospital on Monday confirmed the girl had been raped.

Her friend managed to identify two of the attackers. The three boys were arrested on Monday.

On Tuesday evening, two of them, both aged 13, were charged with gang rape, anti-Semitic insults and violence and issuing death threats. The pair were taken into custody.

The third boy, 12, was also charged with anti-Semitic insults and violence and issuing death threats, but not with rape. He was allowed return home after being charged.

I suspect that the description ‘French’ teens should really read, ‘teens born in France and holding French passports’. But it’s a terrible crime whoever they are. 

France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia wrote on X that he was ‘horrified’ and that ‘no-one should be excused in the face of this unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism’.

Courbevoie’s centre-right mayor Jacques Kossowski condemned what he called ‘an abject act’ and called for the perpetrators to be met with the full force of the law ‘whatever their age.’