23 June 2008

PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday led condemnation of an attack in Paris that left a Jewish teenager in a coma after he was beaten with metal bars, which organisations said was motivated by anti-Semitism.

The 17-year-old was lying in a coma in hospital after being savaged Saturday evening by youths in Paris' multi-ethnic 19th district, his father said.

"We were celebrating Shabbat. My son was wearing his kippah (skullcap) and was coming home," he told RTL radio.

"A gang of about a dozen youths attacked him because he was wearing a kippah and because he is a Jew," said the father, identified only as Philippe. "My wife and I are very upset."

Sarkozy, travelling to Israel for a state visit, issued a statement expressing his "profound indignation" and reaffirmed his "total determination to combat all forms of racism and anti-Semitism."

Defence Minister Herve Morin later urged the French courts to be "intransigent" when the case comes to trial.

"Justice must be implacable with these matters," he told BFM-TV. "The Republic must be intransigent on this issue," he added, calling for sentencing of those found guilty to be "applied with the utmost rigour."

Police said they had detained five youths in connection with the beating.

"There is no doubt that this is an anti-Semitic act," said Ariel Goldmann, vice president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF).

Sammy Gholzan, from the Bureau for Vigilance on Anti-Semitism, said a group of six or seven youths attacked the teenager, a member of the local Lubavitch community, with metal bars and "smashed his skull".

Condemning the attack, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe called on authorities to enact new measures to combat xenophobia if the investigation showed that it was motivated by anti-Semitism.

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