Bulgaria says 3 held on suspicion of vandalizing Paris Holocaust memorial in May
Balkan nation’s security agency says the suspects ‘are known to gravitate around Bulgarian groups that profess far-right extremist ideology’
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Three Bulgarian men were tracked down and arrested on suspicion of defacing the Paris Holocaust memorial in mid-May, Bulgaria’s state security agency (SANS) announced Friday.
Two Bulgarian nationals were detained July 25 and a third was detained in another EU country, the SANS said in a statement.
Prosecution sources told AFP that a 35-year-old man was arrested in the capital Sofia, another one in the southwestern town of Blagoevgrad, and the third in Croatia.
The men “are known to gravitate around Bulgarian groups that profess far-right extremist ideology” and SANS is working to identify the instigators of the May 14 vandalism, the agency added.
France had issued European arrest warrants for the men, who are suspected of daubing red hands on the Paris Holocaust Memorial’s Wall of the Righteous, which lists 3,900 people honoured for protecting Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II.
Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.
Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a center of French Jewish life, sparking indignation among the Jewish community.
