A French court has sentenced two 19-year-old men to prison terms after they were convicted of glorifying terrorism by performing Nazi salutes outside a synagogue in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris in the Val-d'Oise department.
The court in Pontoise, which heard the case under expedited proceedings, handed down an eight-month prison sentence to one defendant, a Russian citizen, and also ordered his permanent expulsion from France. His accomplice, a French citizen of Ukrainian origin, received a six-month prison term. Both men will be registered in France's national database of individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses, according to reports from Ynet and AFP news agency.
The incident occurred late Sunday night, around 11:00 p.m., on Ramon-Rochon Street. A passing driver noticed the two men filming themselves making Nazi salutes outside the local Moroccan synagogue. What made their actions particularly offensive was the precise location they chose: directly beneath an official memorial plaque honoring victims of the brutal 2012 terrorist attacks carried out by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse. In one of those attacks, Merah murdered a haredi teacher and three children—including two of the teacher's own sons—at the Otzar HaTorah Jewish school.
Police arrived quickly and detained the suspects shortly after the incident. The investigation, supported by footage from municipal security cameras and photographs found on one suspect's mobile phone, conclusively confirmed the antisemitic gesture. Investigators also discovered that the Russian citizen had performed the salute alongside another individual whose identity remains unknown and who has not yet been apprehended.
Sarcelles is home to a large and vibrant Jewish community, and France overall has Western Europe's largest Jewish population, numbering approximately half a million people. The verdict has once again highlighted the French Jewish community's ongoing struggle with a rising wave of antisemitism in recent years, which has reached unprecedented levels since Hamas's October 7, 2023 terror attack and the subsequent war.
Responding to the sentence, Moez Kahloun, president of Sarcelles' Jewish community, welcomed the court's decision, stating that swift and firm punitive action is "the only way" to combat the spreading wave of antisemitism in the Val-d'Oise region and throughout France. However, Kahloun expressed deep concern that the antisemitic provocation was carried out openly in public space while being deliberately documented. He noted that the community now faces a new and disturbing strain of antisemitism, amplified and sustained by far-right elements operating from outside France's borders.
