A Paris court sentenced four Bulgarian men convicted of participating in a Kremlin-linked plot to desecrate a Second World War memorial to between two and four years in prison on Friday, AFP reports.
The four men were tried for their part in a crime that both French intelligence and the men’s own defense lawyer linked to the FSB, Russia’s security service.
On the night of May 13-14, 2024, 35 red handprints were daubed on the Wall of the Righteous, which honors those who protected Jews during the Nazi occupation of France.
The desecration of the memorial took place in the context of heightened tension between France’s Jewish and Muslim communities – during Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of more than 1,200 people, including 51 French citizens.
A judge said that foreign interference was “indisputable,” adding that those responsible intended to “stir up public opinion, exploit existing divisions and further fragment French society.”
However, laws against acting on behalf of a foreign power were only added to the books after the crime was committed; so the four men could not be tried for allegedly taking orders from Moscow.
Georgi Filipov and Kiril Milushev, who physically carried out the operation, both received two-year prison sentences. Nikolay Ivanov and Mircho Angelov both received four-year sentences for masterminding the attack.
Angelov, who was tried in absentia, remains at large.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said that the crime is one of nine they suspect of being “orchestrated by Russian intelligence.”
Among the others are coffins left at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with the inscription “French soldiers of Ukraine” in June 2024, Stars of David stenciled in Paris in 2023, and pigs’ heads left outside Paris mosques in September this year.