The Strasbourg court.

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B. Poussard / 20 Minutes.

  • This 36-year-old Strasbourg man was on trial for having frightened a graffiti artist of the Jewish faith and for having inscribed on the ground “forbidden to Jews” and “bitch”.

  • He was sentenced to six months in prison.

  • This is his second conviction in less than a week.

Two convictions in less than a week.

Already tried last Tuesday for having voluntarily sprinkled a nurse in the emergency room with his blood, a 36-year-old Strasbourg man was again in correctional this Monday.

This time, he was being prosecuted for having frightened a graffiti artist of Jewish faith and for having inscribed on the ground “forbidden to Jews” and “bitch”.

After the eight-month sentence last week, he was sentenced to six months in prison for public provocation to racial hatred and degradation.

The court matched his sentence, in accordance with the prosecution's requisitions, with the payment of 500 euros to the victim for non-pecuniary damage, as well as nearly 1,000 euros in total in damages to associations having brought civil proceedings, such as SOS Racism and the Licra.

At the end of August, this graffiti artist, under contract with the city, 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 design featuring different names of cities and countries, including Israel.

He had been forced to change his T-shirt and give the defendant two spray cans with which he had written the two famous inscriptions.

" An impulse "

"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".

Apologizing several times at the hearing, the defendant assured to have "understood [his] error", evoking "an impulse" on the background of alcohol, separation with his companion, unsuccessful job search and videos on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His lawyer, Me Élise Le Guennec-Schmitt, spoke of an “individual, isolated, thoughtless act and no propaganda”.

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  • Justice

  • Strasbourg

  • Anti-semitism