French prosecutors are investigating whether a foreign intermediary was behind the painting of more than 200 blue Stars of David on buildings in and around Paris last month amid a surge of anti-Semitic acts in Europe since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Investigators suspect that a man and a woman caught on surveillance footage painting some of the graffiti had communicated in Russian with a person who offered them money to spray the stars on buildings, Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in a statement Tuesday.
The discovery of the stars – more than 60 were found in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on the morning of October 31st, while others have appeared in two suburbs of the capital – shocked many in France, where anti-Semitism is a long-standing concern.
The man and the woman stencilled the stars in one sweep overnight and were accompanied by a third person who took photographs of the graffiti, Ms Beccuau said, adding that the man and woman subsequently left France on October 31st.
Ms Beccuau did not name those two suspects but said that investigators had connected them to another couple, a 33-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman from Moldova, who had been arrested in Paris on October 27th for painting a blue Star of David on a building. The Moldovan pair told investigators that they had acted on the orders of a third party in exchange for payment “as evidenced by a conversation in Russian on their phone,” Ms Beccuau said. Telephone data led investigators to believe that both couples “were in contact with the same third party,” Ms Beccuau added.
“It therefore cannot be ruled out that the tagging of the blue Stars of David in the Paris region was carried out at the explicit request of a person living abroad,” she said.
The statement from the prosecutor did not identify the Russian-speaking intermediary. Olivier Véran, spokesperson for the French government, and a spokesperson for the foreign ministry both declined to comment on Wednesday on possible Russian involvement, citing the continuing investigation.
But at least one other official has suggested that the graffiti might have been a way to sow discord in French society, where tensions are running high after Hamas’ deadly October 7th assault and Israel’s retaliatory strikes against the group in the Gaza Strip.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.