The alleged rape last weekend of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by boys who hurled antisemitic abuse at her has ignited simmering tensions in France over attitudes toward the largest Jewish community in Western Europe.
President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist whose decision to call snap elections this month shocked even his closest allies, responded by denouncing the “scourge of antisemitism” in French schools.
In the most recent one that shocked the country, the three boys are said to have dragged the girl into an abandoned building where she was repeatedly raped and insulted.
The three boys, ages 12 and 13, one of them previously known to the girl, are being investigated for rape, death threats and insults “aggravated by their link to the victim’s religion,” a prosecutor’s statement on Wednesday said.
Two of them have been placed in pretrial detention, it added.
Persons:
Emmanuel Macron, Gabriel Attal, Jean, Luc Mélenchon, “
Locations:
France, Western Europe