Bulgarian citizen, along with two other men, placed coffins labeled “French soldiers from Ukraine” at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. The three were brought before a French court in order to establish “possible foreign interference”, reported AFP. The tracks lead to Moscow.
The prosecutor’s office requested that the three suspects be charged with premeditated crime. They are a 38-year-old Bulgarian man who drove the car carrying the coffins, a 25-year-old man born in Germany, and a 17-year-old man born in Ukraine, the prosecutor’s office said.
The three left on 2nd of June “five life-size coffins covered with the French flag, with the inscription ‘French soldiers from Ukraine,'” a source informed of the case told AFP. There was plaster in the coffins.
According to the same source, the van driver was then “interrogated in the vicinity” of the Eiffel Tower. The check of his phone showed a connection with a man, also of Bulgarian citizenship, who was “identified” by the investigators in connection with another case – with the painted “red hands” on the Holocaust memorial in Paris in mid-May.
According to an informed source close to the case, two other people were arrested in the afternoon at the bus station in Bercy, who were preparing to “take a bus to Berlin”.
When questioned, the driver told the police that he did not know the two youths who had unloaded the coffins. He said he met them “the day before with the coffins and asked them to open them to make sure there were no bodies,” a police source told AFP.
The two young men said they “met once in Berlin but came to France separately,” this source added. All three said they were “unemployed and in need of money,” the police source added. The driver “received 120 euros for the work, and the youth – 400 euros.”
The incident resembles two recent cases where the same suspicions of “possible foreign interference” exist. On the night of May 13-14, “red hands” were painted on the Holocaust memorial in Paris, and police suspect three people who fled abroad.
In October, after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, stars of David were spray painted on the facades of several buildings in the Paris region. The French authorities blame the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for the events for which a Moldovan couple was arrested.
In both cases, they are “mercenaries who are paid to destabilize and take advantage of the division in French society,” as French Europe and Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Sejournet said in mid-May.
Illustrative Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/eiffel-tower-during-daytime-161853/
