French authorities are investigating an incident in which pigs’ heads were placed outside multiple mosques in Paris and its suburbs, occurring on a recent Monday night. The police suspect that two foreign nationals may have acted under the direction of a foreign intelligence service, likely Russian. Authorities discovered the heads outside nine different mosques on Tuesday morning, leading to considerable public outrage.
The investigation has revealed that the two suspects were driving a car registered in Serbia and had a Croatian mobile phone. They reportedly crossed into Belgium shortly after the incident. This occurrence is reminiscent of other recent provocations in Paris, such as anti-Semitic graffiti displayed in October 2023 and vandalism at the city’s Holocaust memorial in May 2024. Both of these previous cases had links to foreign nationals.
Notably, in the graffiti incident, a connection to Moldova was established, while the recent red hands incident is set to go to trial involving four suspects of Bulgarian origin. In a related statement, the prosecutor for the red hands case referred to the events as potentially orchestrated by Russian intelligence to destabilize France.
A farmer from Normandy reported selling around ten pigs’ heads to the two individuals. Security footage shows one suspect placing a pig’s head outside a mosque in Malakoff and taking photographs, a tactic that matches patterns seen in prior incidents where perpetrators documented their actions.
Additionally, two other events from the past year caught investigators’ attention, including stenciled images of coffins found in the city and the placement of actual coffins adorned with French flags at the Eiffel Tower. In both instances, suspects of Moldovan origin were identified. An intelligence report indicated that Russian operatives might utilize proxies to promote discord in France, and social media analyses have linked false information spreading to Russia and its surrounding regions.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx25414vg7lo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss