- PARIS -- A 24-year-old unemployed
illustrator could be sentenced to life in jail after admitting he sprayed
swastikas on Jewish tombstones in Lyon last week and attacked a north African
man with an axe, French police said yesterday.
-
- The suspect, dubbed "Phineas" - the name found
scrawled at the La Mouche Jewish cemetery in Lyon on a desecrated gravestone,
acted alone, motivated by "a visceral hatred of Arabs", the Lyon
prosecutor, Xavier Richard, said, adding: "He made no distinction
between Jews and Arabs."
-
- Identified only as Michael, the suspect, who gave himself
up at a Paris police station on Saturday, said he came across the name
Phineas while watching a television programme on neo-Nazi groups in the
US, including one called the Phineas Priesthood.
-
- He has been placed under formal investigation for "deliberate
damage to a place of worship" and "attempted murder with a racial
motive". DNA evidence also links him to the axe attack, Mr Richard
said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1284727,00.html
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