Source: Yahoo! News
Wire Service: AFP
On August 30, 2004 Agence France-Presse reported, "French police confirmed that a man arrested in connection with what was first believed to be an anti-Semitic arson attack on a Jewish social center a week ago was a Jewish man who had worked there. Police headquarters refused to identify the man taken into custody in connection with the August 22 attack, but investigators said the man had worked on occasion as a guard at the center, but that management wanted to fire him. Investigators suggested that 'resentment' over the loss of his job could have motivated the suspect, in his 50s, to torch the eastern Paris center out of revenge, but that explanation was not confirmed. The man -- who was placed in preventive detention for up to 48 hours -- was 'more or less homeless' and 'mentally unstable,' the sources said. On August 22, the Jewish center was gutted in a massive blaze, and swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans like 'The world would be pure if there were no more Jews' were scrawled inside."