On Friday June 21, a man was sentenced to one year in prison, including six months with a two-year probationary suspension, for having placed a racist tag on the Beauvais mosque on the evening of Christmas Eve 2023. The word « singe » with red paint was found at the entrance to the building of the place of worship. A similar tag was also found on the front of a tobacco bar in this town in Oise.
The individual, who had already been found guilty of similar acts in the past, was sentenced by the Beauvais criminal court for “public incitement to discrimination and threats of crime against persons committed because of race, ethnicity, nation or religion, and damage to public property”. He is prohibited “to appear at the mosque and obligation of psychological care and repair of damages”notes Frédéric Trinh, public prosecutor of Beauvais, cited by France 3.. The convicted person also “prohibition on possessing or carrying a weapon”.
According to L’Oise Hebdo, the man, aged 55, had sent a pig’s ear by mail to the mosque on May 17. The prints left on the mail made it possible to trace the perpetrator. During the search carried out at the home of the fifty-year-old, readings of a racist, anti-Semitic and negationist nature were discovered, as well as symbolic objects with swastikas… and clothes identical to those which had been worn by the author tags on Christmas Eve and identified using video surveillance images.
While the expertise of his laptop revealed consultations of sites of a Nazi nature, or on the far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, the man denied any hatred towards the Muslim community, trying to blame his act alcohol. But for the court, “The psychological expertise is clear on your hatred against the Arabs, and your neighbor. You acknowledge the facts without any empathy. You clearly express being racist, believing in the hierarchy of races.”
