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A French court on Friday sentenced four Bulgarians to between two and four years in prison for desecrating a Jewish memorial with red handprints last year, in what prosecutors think may have been foreign interference linked to Russia.
The Paris criminal court gave two-year sentences to Georgi Filipov and Kiril Milushev, described as the perpetrators, and four years and three years respectively to Nikolay Ivanov and Mircho Angelov, considered the operation’s “masterminds”. Angelov is still at large.
All four were also banned from entering French territory for life.
The trial was the first of its kind in France, one of a series of similar crimes suspected of having been orchestrated by a foreign power with the aim to destabilise.
The four defendants were not tried for acting on behalf of a foreign power: that aggravating circumstance was only added to France’s criminal code after the incident took place.
However, the judges said the fact that foreign interference occurred was “indisputable”, and it had been aimed to “stir up public opinion, exploit existing divisions and further fragment French society”.
The vandalism was staged during heightened tensions in France over the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas that broke out in October 2023.
The wall daubed with red handprints by the perpetrators lists 3,900 people honoured for protecting Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in the second world war.
Several other red handprints were found in nearby areas of central Paris.
The prosecutor’s office said a security agent had caught two people placing stencils on the memorial.
Investigators identified them with security footage, then discovered that three had caught a bus to Belgium the next morning, then a flight to Bulgaria.
The defendants present were quick to blame their absent accomplice, calling Angelov the “leader”, and denying any ideological motivation.
Filipov swore he did not realise he was tagging the memorial, which is known as the “wall of the righteous”.
He also rejected accusations that his recruitment was related to his apparent neo-Nazi affiliations, including having a swastika tattoo and appearing in social media posts giving Nazi salutes.
He said he had left that behind, adding: “I’ve made bad choices in the past.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the red handprint incident, possibly “orchestrated by Russian intelligence services”, was one of nine such suspected acts of foreign interference.
Viginum, the French authority monitoring foreign interference online, said the red hand incident had been exploited by “actors linked to Russia” on X.
