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A view of the city of Annecy, eastern France
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ANNECY (EJP)--- Three young men were condemned to nine months imprisonment last Monday by a criminal court in Annecy, eastern France, for an anti-Semitic attack against a young Jewish boy in August.
Hakim Bouaoune, 21, Yassin Gsimi, 25, and Nabil Achenani, 20, all from Bellegarde, a small city in southeastern France, had been denied entrance to a nightclub in the nearby city of Annecy, on the grounds that they were drunk.
When the three heard a teenager call her boyfriend "Abraham", they started beating the 16-year-old boy and yelling anti-Semitic insults.
The nightclub’s bouncers intervened with dogs and held the assailants until the police arrived. Abraham was taken to hospital and was unable to work for six days.
The prosecutor had requested a one-year prison term, claiming that the “racist insults were clear” and that the boy’s first name, Abraham, led to an outburst of violence.
The local Jewish community welcomed the sentence which is the harshest ever imposed in France for an anti-Semitic attack.
Abominable words
The victim’s lawyer, Marc Dufour, criticised “the abominable words of the three aggressors. It’s disgusting.”
“You are the first to complain about racism and about the fact that you are not respected but you are the first to convey a behaviour of hatred,” he added. “It is everyone’s right today to be named Abraham or Yassin and to be left alone.”
The defence lawyer, Philippe Metral, denied any anti-Semitic intent, saying the three didn’t intend to go on “a commando-like Jew-beating rampage”.
“They were not in a normal state because they drunk a cocktail of whiskey and beer,” he said.
According to the local Jewish community, this is the first occurrence of an anti-Semitic attack in this region of France.
Unprecedented violence
Annecy’s Jewish community leader Robert Moos welcomed the sentence and congratulated local authorities for acting quickly.
“The police arrested the thugs immediately and made it possible to bring them to justice,” Moos told EJP, describing the assault’s impact on the community.
"We were shocked by the affair. We have lived beside a large Muslim community for years and never felt any hostility. Our small family-like community never knew such violence,” he added.
"However we were completely reassured when we learned the thugs weren’t from our town. We feel safe."
Moos stressed that Abraham was not really Jewish.
"The youth’s father was Jewish but Abraham doesn’t have any particular attachment to the community."