The two Moldovan nationals suspected of having tagged coffins in Paris at the end of June with a mention of Ukraine remain in detention, the appeal court having rejected their lawyers’ appeal on Monday, we learned on Tuesday from a judicial source.
The two Moldovans are suspected of having tagged coffins with stencils and red paint, accompanied by the inscriptions “Stop the Death, Mriya, Ukraine” on the facades of the newspaper “Le Figaro” and the Agence France-Presse. In Ukrainian, “mriya” means “dream”.
According to their initial statements reported by a source close to the case, the two Moldovans claimed to have been paid around a hundred euros to create these tags.
They were charged on June 22 with vandalism and participation in an effort to demoralize the army with a view to harming national defense in peacetime. They have been in pretrial detention since then.
These offences were retained by the Paris prosecutor’s office when a judicial investigation was opened. Initially, the investigation had been opened for group damage and criminal association.
The decision of the investigating chamber rendered on Monday “is unconstitutional and we will immediately file an appeal”, their lawyers, Mes Emanuel de Dinechin and Louis Gloria, responded to AFP on Tuesday.
“The magistrates are re-establishing a crime of opinion that has fallen into disuse since the Algerian war, namely the demoralization of the armies, to detain the authors of trivial inscriptions, liable at most to a fine for minor damage,” they commented the day after their incarceration.
On June 22, on X, Moldovan Foreign Minister Mihai Popsoi “strongly condemned Russia’s hybrid tactics in France of involving citizens of Moldova in acts of vandalism and incitement to hatred.”
The French penal code does not provide for an offence for acts involving interference by a third country.
This series of tags echoes several other recent cases, some of which have had a strong media impact, in connection with the war in Ukraine and between Hamas and Israel.
