A juvenile court in Saverne, Bas-Rhin, France handed down eight to 18 months suspended sentences to five young men for having desecrated the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union in the Alsace region of eastern France, also damaging a Holocaust memorial there.
The attack on the cemetery took place in February 2015, and the five youths — then aged between 15 and 17 — were arrested a few days later after one teen turned himself in and named the other four. They were charged with having desecrated and degraded burials “because of their belonging to deceased persons of a particular religion, in this case Judaism,” media reported.
French media reported that the court also sentenced the five — now aged 18-19 — to 140 hours of community service work. The youth who was judged to be the “leader” of the attack was sentenced to 18 months suspended, three other defendants to one year suspended, the fifth to eight months suspended.
France-3 reported that the sentences were “well below” those that had been expected. “In fact, they faced up to a maximum of seven years in prison,” it wrote.
The desecration sparked outrage and received widespread publicity. About 250 graves were targeted. Most of the affected headstones were toppled and some were defaced or otherwise damaged; the teens also tried to open some of the graves, and it was reported that they urinated on some of the graves.
See video of the damage from 2015: