Mother, baby attacked on Paris train

[RonOnGuitar]

Mother, baby attacked on Paris train after mistaken for Jews

By AFP



VERSAILLES, France - A young woman and her baby were attacked in a suburban train near Paris on Saturday by unidentified men who drew swastikas on her stomach with a pen in what police said was an anti-Semitic assault.



The six attackers who were armed with knives clipped the 23-year-old woman's hair, and cut her t-shirt and pants before drawing three swastikas on her body.



The men of North African origin also overturned the pram with her baby of 13 months.



In the attack they robbed her backpack which contained her identity papers, a bank card and 200 euros ($250).



Police said the attackers erroneously assumed the woman was Jewish because she was living in Paris' posh 16th district.



"Only Jews live in the 16th district," one of the men was quoted as having said.



French President Jacques Chirac expressed his horror and condemned what he called "a shameful attack."



The perpetrators must be found, held accountable and condemned with the full severity of the law, a statement issued by his office said.



French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin asked police to find the attackers within the shortest possible time, his ministry said in a statement.



The attack was "all the more serious because it was marked by racism and anti-Semitism," he said

[DreamTone7]

It's beginning...everywhere you look.

[quetsionnaire]

That's right, DT.



One racial attack and the whole of Europe is turning to rabid anti-semitism.



What a pair of dimwitted propagandists you too are.



See my posts about racial violence in America.

[LarreeMP3]

The French are some of the most anti-semitic people on the planet these days.



If they had the money and weapons...

Click here to listen to three decades of original Larree music!

Edited by: LarreeMP3 at: 7/13/04 20:56

[DreamTone7]

Looks like one attack is not quite all that France is having problems with:



www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/eu...index.html

[LarreeMP3]

Q might want to let this thread sink to page 2, but...

Click here to listen to three decades of original Larree music!

[LarreeMP3]

What a dumb bitch.

Click here to listen to three decades of original Larree music!

[RonOnGuitar]

UPDATE ON THIS STORY! (The woman who made the report seems to be "reality challenged".)



==============================



Wednesday July 14, 03:41 AM



French woman admits she made up anti-Semitic attack



A French woman who claimed last week she had been the victim of a vicious anti-Semitic attack admitted to police that she had made up the entire incident, and was detained for falsely reporting a crime.



After being questioned for a second time by investigators about the alleged incident on July 9, which shocked France and shed a negative light on government efforts to stamp out anti-Semitism, the woman admitted she had lied.



The 23-year-old had initially told police that a gang of six youths had accosted her on a suburban train outside Paris, slashing her clothes and drawing swastikas on her stomach after mistaking her for a Jew.



"The first declarations of the young woman reveal that her accusations were lies and that she had been making it all up," the public prosecutor's office said in a statement.



The woman admitted to "having made knife cut marks on herself, cut off a lock of her own hair and drawn swastikas on her body," it said.



Doubts had mounted Tuesday over her claim after no one came forward to corroborate the story, despite the fact that she said some 20 people had witnessed the alleged incident.



She changed her story Tuesday, too, to say that she and her 13-month-old child had been assaulted outside the train, but finally admitted that she had totally invented the attack, police said.



The woman has been placed in preventive detention for falsely reporting a crime, state prosecutor Xavier Salvat told AFP. She could face up to six months in prison and a 7,500-euro (9,200-dollar) fine if tried and convicted.



Her boyfriend has also been detained, police said.



President Jacques Chirac, who had strongly condemned the alleged incident, is sure to face questions about the case Wednesday, when he participates in his traditional Bastille Day live televised interview.



Last week, Chirac called for perpetrators of anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic acts to face tough punishment, and has excluded racist crimes from his annual July 14 clemency for prisoners.



"The explosion in the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts committed in our country these past few years is a reality that we must fight," government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said Tuesday.



The number of such incidents recorded in France -- home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities -- soared in the first half of the year, according to interior ministry figures.



The woman had testified that her alleged attackers -- whom she described as black and Arab North Africans -- believed her to be Jewish after discovering that she had once lived in the French capital's upmarket 16th district.



"Only Jews live in the 16th district," one of the men was quoted as saying when the group purportedly assaulted the woman, swiped her bag and tipped over the baby carriage with her baby inside.



But investigators said closed-circuit cameras at the station northeast of Paris where the woman said the attackers had left the train did not show the six youths.



Railway personnel at the ticket office where the woman said she reported the affair could remember nothing about it, investigators said.



A 28-year-old man told AFP he had seen the woman on the platform of the station where she said she boarded the train before the attack.



He said her clothes were already torn and she was crying, adding: "I asked her if she wanted help and she said no."



A police source told AFP on Tuesday that the woman had filed six prior complaints in recent years -- among them one for theft and one for sexual assault -- but that the alleged criminals had never been found.



Mouloud Aounit, president of the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples (MRAP), demanded a public apology over the incident.



"We can't fight against one racism by making statements that advocate another kind of racism," he said.

Edited by: RonOnGuitar at: 7/14/04 6:28