Anti-Semitic Attack Reported Near Paris

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/europe/anti-semitic-attack-reported-near-paris.html

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PARIS — Three men wearing masks forced their way into a home in a southeastern suburb of Paris this week, robbed a young couple they believed was Jewish and raped the woman, the French authorities said Wednesday.

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, deplored the attack in the suburb of Créteil, saying the young couple assaulted in the middle of the day on Monday had clearly been victims of anti-Semitism.

Mr. Cazeneuve said that arrests had been quickly made in the case and that neither he nor the government would ease up on the fight “against all forms of racism and anti-Semitism.”

The local prosecutor later issued a statement saying that three young men had been arrested in connection with the rape and robbery as well as a break-in on Nov. 10 in which a 70-year-old man was beaten.

The statement said that three robbers, armed and wearing masks and gloves, pushed into the home of the young couple when they answered the doorbell. They robbed the couple of money and jewelry and then forced them to give up a bank card, all the while making explicit references to the “religion, real or imagined, of the family living in the house.”

The 21-year-old man and the 19-year-old woman were tied up before she was raped, the statement said.

A lawyer for the victims, Séverine Benayoun, said the assailants had seemed to believe that a family member brought cash home from the clothing store he worked in. A stranger had come to the door three weeks before, pretending to be a neighbor in need of sugar, possibly to look the place over, she said. She added that the three men kept saying things like “Tell us were you hide the money, you Jews always have money.”

The country’s most prominent Jewish organization, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, condemned the break-in and the assault on the young woman as “savage.”

“Anti-Semitism continues to ravage our country,” the council said in a statement.