Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors
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French police have tracked three suspects in last week's defacement of the Paris Holocaust memorial across the border into Belgium, prosecutors said.
The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before "departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station" in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.
Investigators added that the suspects' "reservations had been made from Bulgaria".
An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.
On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.
Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.
Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.
The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel's campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.
“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.
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The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before "departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station" in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.
Investigators added that the suspects' "reservations had been made from Bulgaria".
An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.
On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.
Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.
Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.
The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel's campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.
“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.
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