Three Serbs charged with carrying out recent paint attack on Paris synagogues, Holocaust memorial on behalf of ‘foreign power’

A French judge has charged three Serbs with vandalizing Jewish sites with paint last weekend “to serve the interests of a foreign power,” a judicial source says.

A source close to the case says investigators suspect Russia is behind the attacks for which the men were charged on Thursday evening.

They had exchanged messages on Telegram with other individuals not yet apprehended, it added.

France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalised with paint on Friday night last week, in what the Israeli embassy denounced as a “coordinated antisemitic attack.”

The source following the case describes the three suspects, two born in 1995 and one born in 2003, as having completed a task motivated by financial compensation, but without being aware of any geopolitical implications.

They were two brothers and a third person who had lived in France for several years, the source says.

They were arrested on Monday in southeast France as they tried to leave the country.

Russia has previously denied involvement in a number of attacks attributed to it by French officials, including an incident in May 2024 when red hands were tagged on Paris’s main Holocaust memorial.