EU employee assaults woman he thought was Jewish

The European Jewish Congress called for the suspension of a Maltese European Union employee who is accused of hitting and attempting to strangle another EU worker while shouting anti-Semitic hate speech.

European Commission worker Stefan Grech allegedly assaulted the 50-year-old Italian woman in July, hitting her in the face with a metal plate bearing the portrait of Benito Mussolini, the Italian leader who was a wartime ally of Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

During the incident, which occurred at a Brussels café at around midnight, Grech called the woman a “dirty Jew,” asserting that “Hitler should have killed all the Jews,” according to a complaint filed against him with local police by the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, or LBCA.

The altercation took place after the woman, who is not Jewish, reproached him for carrying around a metal plate with Mussolini’s likeness.

The woman alleged that Grech started attacking her when she told him she “could be Jewish,” according to Malta Today.

“That’s when all of a sudden the man took the sign in his hand and hit me in the face near my left ear. He then tried to take my neck in hands to strangle me,” the woman told the police.

Belgian police is currently investigating the event and the EC is also conducting an internal inquiry.

Grech resigned Friday from his position as head of EU trade union Generation2004 and took down his Facebook account, Malta Today reported.

Grech denied assaulting the woman, saying he merely tapped her with the plate. In an interview with the Times of Malta, he said he had been drinking for several hours before the incident. Before allegedly using the plate to hit the woman, he made comments – which LBCA did not specify – dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I was out celebrating 10 years of working with the European Commission and had been drinking mojitos from 7 p.m. till about midnight when all this happened,” Grech said in the interview with the Times of Malta. “I am not a racist. I have Jewish and black friends and have nothing against them,” Grech said.

Following the incident, the woman was taken to the hospital and treated for a concussion. The alleged attack left her “in a state of trauma,” said LBCA head Joel Rubinfeld, who met with the woman.

“If the European Union has a zero-tolerance for racism and hate then Grech should be immediately suspended until the police investigation ends,” Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said in a statement Friday.

Grech was convicted in 2002 of owning and distributing child pornography, but received a suspended sentence after it emerged that he had been receiving psychiatric treatment for an extended period prior to the conviction, according to the Times of Malta.