Anti-Semitic sign brandished by an anti-pass in Metz: justice orders an investigation

The prosecution has opened an investigation into a "sign with a clearly anti-Semitic message" brandished during an anti-health pass demonstration on Saturday in Metz, the Moselle prefecture announced in a statement on Sunday.

The prefect Laurent Touvet "strongly condemns this message", declared the prefecture, adding that "an investigation is opened by the prosecutor's office of Metz".

Asked by AFP, he said that it was an investigation of flagrance entrusted to the Metz police station.

You "have to be intractable"

A photo posted on social media shows a young woman holding up the offending sign on which are inscribed the names of several politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, some of whom are Jews. "This sign is abject. Anti-Semitism is a crime, by no means an opinion. Such remarks will not go unpunished", criticized the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin on his Twitter account. "I asked @ prefet57 to report to the Public Prosecutor's Office on the basis of article 40 (of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Editor's note). The police services are mobilized to identify their author," he added.

This sign is abject.

Anti-Semitism is a crime, by no means an opinion.

Such remarks will not go unpunished.

I asked @ prefet57 to make a report to the Public Prosecutor's Office on the basis of article 40.

The police services are mobilized to identify their author.

pic.twitter.com/VDEoMp3W8c

- Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) August 8, 2021

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra) announced for its part Sunday to AFP its intention to file a complaint, considering that "we are very clearly in the presence of a sign with assumed anti-Semitism" .

We "have to be intractable," she stressed.

SOS Racisme also said in a statement "studying" the possibility of legal action.

"Appalling and revolting", denounced Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Armed Forces, in charge of Memory and Veterans.

"Anti-Semitism killed yesterday and still kills today. Anti-Semitism is not an opinion. It is a crime, which must be condemned systematically", added, still on Twitter the Minister for Equality , Elisabeth Moreno.

The general delegate of En Marche!

Stanislas Guérini, also castigated "open-face anti-Semitism. Ignoble. Chilling", and considered it "liable to prosecution".

The Israeli embassy in France "appalled"

The Israeli embassy in France said it was "appalled at such an expression of the most abject anti-Semitic hatred". Reactions hailed by Licra, which also asks the organizers of demonstrations against the health pass to "dissociate themselves from this kind of talk". On the sign, the names frame the slogan: "But who?". This one appeared following an interview in June on the CNews channel of a retired general, Daniel Delawarde, signatory of a column evoking “the disintegration” of France published by Valeurs Actuelles.

To the question "who controls the 'media pack'?" and after several reminders, he replied "the community you know well", before being cut by the presenter, Jean-Marc Morandini. For the Licra, this slogan is "another way of saying that we don't like Jews". The Paris prosecutor's office had opened shortly after the interview with General Delawarde an investigation for "public defamation" and "incitement to hatred and violence because of the origin or membership of an ethnic group, a nation, a race or religion ". The demonstration in Metz gathered 3,800 people on Saturday, according to the police.