Paris Prosecutors Open Inquiry Into Protest at U.S. Embassy
|
Version 0 of 1. PARIS — The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed on Monday that it had opened an investigation to identify the organizers of a protest outside the U.S. Embassy over the weekend against an American-made online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad. A crowd of around 250 people — including dozens of Arab men dressed in traditional galabeya robes and women in face-covering veils — converged on Saturday afternoon on the streets near the embassy, which sits just off of the Place de la Concorde, waving banners, praying on sidewalks and chanting anti-American slogans. The police said the demonstration was unauthorized and was apparently organized through messages sent out via social media and mobile text messages. According to the police, about 150 people were held for questioning and later released, while one person, a minor, was detained for assaulting a police officer. Unlike many of the protests of the film that have spread around 20 countries over the past week, the demonstration on Saturday was largely nonviolent and a few minor scuffles were reported as police officers in riot gear arrived to break up the crowd, which spilled out in the direction of the Interior Ministry and the Tuileries Garden. The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, condemned the protest as “unacceptable,” dismissed the participants as presenting a “caricature of Islam” and barred any further anti-American demonstrations. “I have issued instructions so that this does not happen again,” Mr. Valls told France 2 television on Sunday. “Any incitement to hatred must be fought with the greatest firmness.” An estimated five to six million Muslims live in France, about 10 percent of the population. The rector of the Grande Mosque in Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, who last week called on French Muslims to resist the anti-Islam “provocation” of the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” said Sunday in a radio interview that demonstrations against the film were “counterproductive.” |