French teens charged with anti-Semitic rape in attack condemned by political leaders

Two teenage boys were charged with the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a suspected anti-Semitic attack in a Paris suburb that has raised tensions in France ahead of snap parliamentary elections. French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday denounced the “scourge of anti-Semitism”, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused the “extreme left” of “instrumentalising” the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The suspected anti-Semitic attack in Courbevoie, a northwestern Paris suburb, has sent shockwaves in France in the run-up to a general election that could bring the far-right National Rally to power for the first time.

The girl told police she was approached by three boys aged between 12 and 13 while she was in a park near her home with a friend and dragged into a shed on Saturday evening in Courbevoie.

The suspects beat her and "forced her to have anal and vaginal penetration, fellatio, while uttering death threats and anti-Semitic remarks", a police source told AFP.

Her friend managed to identify two of the attackers.

The three boys were arrested on Monday.

On Tuesday evening, two of them, both aged 13, were charged with gang rape, anti-Semitic insults and violence and issuing death threats. The pair were taken into custody.

French leaders across the political spectrum have expressed horror over the brutal attack of a minor.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)


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