A Jewish woman was reported to have been kidnapped, raped and threatened with death and of being sex trafficked by a man who allegedly was seeking to “avenge Palestine”.
On Sunday, police arrested a 32-year-old man — who has yet to be named publicly — in the Gennevilliers commune of Paris’ northwestern suburbs, on suspicion of kidnapping, rape, and making “death threats due to religion,” Le Parisien reports.
The woman had reportedly met the man a week before the incident allegedly took place. After going to his home, the man allegedly refused to let her leave and stole her cell phone.
According to police sources, the man sent a message to the alleged victim’s mother, saying: “Good luck, you will never find your daughter again, you will never see her again, I will prostitute your daughter.”
In a separate message sent to the woman’s former boyfriend, he said that he had taken the Jewish woman to “avenge Palestine”.
Eventually, the woman recovered her phone and called the police. The elite Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) unit of the French National Police was able to geolocate her call and ultimately freed the woman from the apartment.
The man will be brought before a court on June 21st when he will face prosecution for the use of narcotics and for “threats of death materialised in writing due to religion”. The prosecution said that allegations of rape “require additional investigations”.
The potential kidnapping charges are also currently “insufficiently characterised”, the prosecutors added according to Le Figaro.
Following the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel, France and other European nations with large Muslim populations saw a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents.
The Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said in March that in 2023 there were 1,676 antisemitic incidents compared to 436 in the year before, 60 per cent of which involved physical violence or threats.
Last month, France also raised its terror threat warning level to its highest alert following the suspected Islamist attack on a Moscow Concert Hall that left 143 dead.