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’

By AFP 27 July 2024, 5:49 am

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The "Wall of the Righteous" (Mur des Justes) outside the Shoah Memorial in Paris, France, is vandalized with red-hands graffiti, May 14, 2024. (Antonin Utz / AFP)

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.

A picture shows red hand graffitis painted on buildings’ walls of Moussy Street, in the area where earlier a Holocaust memorial was vandalized with the same red hand prints in Paris, France, on May 14, 2024. (Antonin UTZ / AFP)

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.