Red hands graffitis are seen on the "Wall of the Righteous" (Mur des Justes) outside the Shoah memorial in Paris, on May 14, 2024, after the monument was vandalized overnight. ANTONIN UTZ / AFP
A French court on Friday, October 31, sentenced four Bulgarians to between two and four years in prison for desecrating a Jewish memorial with red handprints last year, in what prosecutors think may have been foreign interference linked to Russia.
The Paris Criminal Court handed down two-year sentences to Georgi Filipov and Kiril Milushev, described as the perpetrators, and four and three years respectively to Nikolay Ivanov and Mircho Angelov, considered the operation's "masterminds." Angelov is still at large.
All four were also banned from entering French territory for life.
The trial was the first of its kind in France, one of a series of similar cases suspected of having been orchestrated by a foreign power with the aim to destabilise.
