Serbian police have arrested 11 people, accusing them of “inciting hatred” in France and Germany, and linking them to acts that include placing pigs’ heads near mosques and defacing Jewish sites.
The arrests came days after French prosecutors said foreign interference was probably to blame for a spate of provocative acts that had targeted Jewish and Muslim sites in France in recent years, as tensions run high over the war in Gaza. French officials have previously said they were investigating Russia’s role in destabilising operations that have stoked social tensions and sown division in France.
On Monday, Serbia’s interior ministry said the 11 people arrested were Serbian nationals. They were believed to have been trained by another suspect who was “acting under the instructions of a foreign intelligence service” and who remained on the run, it added. The ministry did not specify the nationality of the other suspect.
The ministry alleged the group had been involved in acts that took place between April and September this year, citing the defacing of a French Holocaust memorial and three synagogues with green paint, the placing of pigs’ heads outside Paris-area mosques and “concrete skeletons” inscribed with messages left at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
“Their objective was also to spread ideas advocating and inciting hatred, discrimination and violence based on differences,” the ministry said.
The arrests came weeks after the latest incident prompted outrage across France. After pigs’ heads were left outside at least nine mosques in and around Paris, prosecutors in the city said the acts had been carried out by foreign nationals “with the clear intention of causing unrest within the nation”. The two people involved were believed to have crossed into Belgium a few hours after the acts.
The prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the tactics used to target the mosques echoed other incidents that had rocked France in the past two years, from the painting of about 60 stars of David on buildings in Paris and districts on the outskirts, and the red hands spray-painted on the wall of the city’s Holocaust memorial.
“So we could be convinced that these incidents are acts of interference,” she told broadcaster BFMTV earlier this month. “Why? Because they have similar modus operandi.”
She said the acts were carried out by eastern Europeans who often take photos to document what they have done and send these images to people beyond France’s borders.
French police had detained several suspects in connection with these attacks. Three Serbian nationals were detained in May, linked to the green paint used to vandalise synagogues and a Holocaust memorial, while four Bulgarians are expected to stand trial next month over the red-hand symbols.
After the appearance of stars of David on Paris’s buildings sparked fears of antisemitism, police arrested a Moldovan couple and prosecutors said they were investigating whether the graffiti had been carried out at the behest of someone abroad.
An alleged handler, a pro-Russian Moldovan businessman, was later identified amid suspicions that Russia’s security services were behind that campaign, according to Agence France-Presse.
With contribution from Agence France-Presse
