Back-Up Desecration of Muslim WW1 Graves (2)
PARIS — France assigned 100 police officers to investigate the desecration on Sunday of 148 Muslim graves in a war cemetery in northern France.
President Nicolas Sarkozy called the attack “sordid” and expressed “profound outrage” after it was discovered that vandals had hung a pig’s head from one tombstone, desecrated others and wrote slogans insulting Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who was born in France to parents from Northern Africa.
The graves were in the Muslim section of Notre Dame de Lorette, among France’s largest war cemeteries, near the northern town of Arras. The dead are mostly from World War I, and the Muslim graves, representing the dead of colonial armies, are turned toward Mecca.
Ms. Dati issued a statement condemning a “hateful act” with “racist connotations” that “hurts the memory of our dead, of the veterans who gave their lives for France.”
Dalil Boubaker, rector of the Paris mosque, told France Info radio: “These are probably the tombs of heroes who fell in combat. This is a hateful, scandalous act, an insult to all Muslims.”
In April 2007, Nazi slogans and swastikas were painted on about 50 graves in the Muslim section of the same cemetery, and two men found guilty in the case were sentenced to a year in prison.
About 78,000 colonial subjects of France, many of them Muslims, died in World War I.