A Strasbourg 38-year-old who frightened a Jewish graffiti artist and grabbed paint cans to mark the ground “Forbidden to Jews”, was sentenced Monday, November 30, 2020 to six months in prison by the Criminal Court Strasbourg for public provocation to the racial hatred and degradations.
The court matched his sentence, in accordance with the prosecution’s requisitions, with the payment of € 500 to the victim for non-pecuniary damage, as well as nearly a thousand euros in total in damages to associations having brought civil proceedings, such as SOS Racism and the Licra.
“I lived the worst three hours of my life”
At the end of August, a graffiti artist, under contract with the metropolis of Strasbourg, had started producing a work on an electrical box in a district to the east of Strasbourg, before being attacked because he was wearing a t- shirt with a printed pattern featuring different names of cities and countries, among which “Israel”. He had to change his T-shirt and give the accused two spray cans with which he had written on the ground “forbidden to Jews” and “bitch”.
“I lived the worst three hours of my life”, explained the victim at the hearing, while his lawyer Me Raphaël Nisand stressed that, even in the absence of physical violence, what had happened was “Unspeakable”.
The condemned says he “understood his mistake”
In October, this man, already convicted on multiple occasions, was acquitted of extortion committed on the grounds of religion concerning the same facts, which had aroused deep emotion at the time. The prefect of Bas-Rhin, Josiane Chevalier, had notably condemned an act “Intolerable”.
Apologizing several times at the hearing, the defendant assured to have “Understood (his) error”, evoking ” an impulse “ against a background of alcohol, separation from his partner, unsuccessful job search and videos on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His lawyer, Me Élise Le Guennec-Schmitt, mentioned a “Individual, isolated, reckless act and no propaganda”.
He was appearing in detention after being sentenced to eight months in prison in November for voluntarily spraying a nurse in the emergency room with his blood.
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