Two 19-year-olds were convicted in France of glorifying terrorism after they were filmed giving Nazi salutes near a synagogue in Sarcelles, in the Val-d’Oise district north of Paris. One, a Russian citizen, was sentenced to eight months in prison and permanently banned from French territory, while the other, a French citizen of Ukrainian origin, received a six-month sentence, the Pontoise prosecutor’s office told AFP.
The incident occurred Sunday at about 11 p.m. A driver passing along Raymond-Rochon Street spotted the two filming themselves giving Nazi salutes near the city’s Moroccan synagogue. They were standing beneath a memorial plaque honoring the victims of the 2012 attacks carried out by Mohammed Merah in Toulouse.
Police arrested the two shortly afterward and took them into custody. According to prosecutors, security camera footage and images found on one suspect’s cellphone confirmed that the antisemitic gesture had been made. Investigators found, however, that the Russian citizen had given the salute alongside another man whose identity remains unknown and who was not arrested.
The two were brought before prosecutors in Pontoise and tried under an expedited procedure. The court convicted them, among other offenses, of glorifying terrorism. The Russian citizen was sentenced to eight months in prison and permanently barred from French territory, while the French citizen of Ukrainian origin was sentenced to six months. Both were also added to France’s national computerized registry of terrorism offenders, known as FIJAIT.
Swastikas spray-painted in Paris; archive photo
Moïse Kahloun, president of the Jewish community in Sarcelles, welcomed the ruling, saying it was the “only way” to confront the wave of antisemitism in Val-d’Oise and across France.
Kahloun said he hoped the incident was isolated but expressed concern that the gesture had been made publicly and filmed. He said the Jewish community was confronting a “new branch of antisemitism” that, in his view, also comes from far-right elements outside France.
Sarcelles is home to a large Jewish community, while France has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe, numbering about 500,000. Members of France’s Jewish community have reported a rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years, particularly since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the war that followed.