Police seek clues as doubts emerge over ‘swastika’ attack

FRENCH police patrolled suburban trains yesterday and studied video from surveillance cameras, trying to track down six men who allegedly attacked a young mother and scrawled swastikas on her stomach.

But doubts began to surface about the truth of the attack report that stunned France.

A 23-year-old mother told police she was robbed by a knife-wielding gang of six young men while on a train with her 13-month-old child on Friday morning, then mistreated after being mistaken for a Jew. None of some 20 witnesses came to her rescue, she told police.

Investigators trying to track down the culprits had almost no clues.

Surveillance cameras at the station where the culprits reportedly left the train showed no young men running from the scene, and no witnesses have come forward despite repeated calls from officials and promises of anonymity.

Both France-Info radio and the television station LCI reported the young woman had filed several complaints for violence and aggression in the past. Neither provided sources, but LCI said she had filed six such complaints in the past. That information could not be immediately confirmed.

“It is absolutely necessary to have a certitude before speaking,” said Paris Police Chief Jean-Paul Proust, when asked about the case. “I have no certitude.”

Despite the doubts being cast on the woman’s report, officials continued to issue statements of shock and calls to fight anti-Semitism.

“Anti-Semitism is shameful ... but there is also a sickness in our society,” said Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. “It’s indifference to violence.”

Police, their information based on the woman’s account, said the gang, described by the victim as aged between 15 and 20, allegedly grabbed the woman’s backpack, taking her money and credit cards.

When they saw her identification card said she lived in the wealthy 16th district of Paris, they reportedly told the woman: “There are only Jews in the 16th.”

The woman told police the men, described as North Africans and blacks, then cut off locks of her hair, opened her shirt with their knives and used markers to draw three swastikas on her stomach.