A 33-year-old Algerian man was charged on Wednesday with attempted murder and other crimes after an arson attack on a synagogue in southern France last week, prosecutors said.
Officials said the man had expressed deep hatred of Jews and told investigators that he had acted to “support the Palestinian cause.” But he denied that he had intended to cause harm, France’s national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office said in a statement issued Wednesday.
In the attack early on Saturday morning, several fires were set at the Beth Yaacov synagogue in La Grande Motte, a resort town on the southern coast of France.
Five people who lived on the first floor of the building and were inside at the time, including the synagogue’s rabbi, were unharmed in the attack. A police officer was slightly injured when a gas canister near a burning vehicle exploded.
French authorities have described the attack as an act of antisemitic terrorism.
The man, identified only by the initials E.H.K., was charged with attempted murder — on terrorist grounds and motivated by race or religion — as well as taking part in a terrorist conspiracy, arson and assaulting police officers. He has been placed in pretrial detention, the prosecutor’s office said.
The attack shook France and deepened anxiety among its large Jewish community, which has been targeted by several deadly attacks in past years and has faced a rise in antisemitic acts since the war in Gaza.
The attack was “liable to create a climate of fear and insecurity in the population and to give rise, in the Jewish community and beyond, to a feeling of dread and direct threat,” the antiterrorism prosecutor’s office said in its statement.
The prosecutor’s office said that police questioning, and the man’s social media posts, appeared to show that he had been “radicalized in the practice of his religion” over several months and that he harbored a “longstanding hatred of Jews, more specifically focused on the situation in Palestine.”
“He has also told some of those close to him of his intention to go and fight in Gaza,” the prosecutor’s office said.
After his arrest, the man told investigators that he had acted to support the Palestinian cause, “denying any homicidal intent but claiming to have intended to provoke fear” and to “provoke a reaction from Israeli authorities,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Three other people were also arrested after the attack. One was quickly released without charges, but the other two, men ages 28 and 30, were charged on Wednesday as well, the prosecutor’s office said.
The prosecutor’s office did not identify either of those men but said they were members of the attacker’s “entourage.” One of the men drove the attacker back home after the attack and was charged with harboring a terrorist criminal; the other appeared to have been told by the attacker about the plot and was charged with taking part in a terrorist conspiracy, the prosecutor’s office said.
In the weeks before the attack, the main suspect had legally acquired a handgun and searched online for local synagogues, Jewish holidays and the timing of Sabbath, the prosecutor’s office said.
The attacker carried an ax inscribed with mentions of “Palestine, Gaza, and the blood of Muslims,” the prosecutor’s office said, although it did not detail what those inscriptions were. During the attack, he wore a kaffiyeh, the scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian identity, and he had tied a Palestinian flag around his waist.
The man had not been on the radar of French or foreign antiterrorism services, and French authorities have said that he did not appear to be connected to any larger organization.
The man, who was born in Blida, Algeria, had filed a request for residency papers and was in France legally, the prosecutor’s office said. He had no job or income and was living in Nîmes, a city in southeastern France about 24 miles from the scene of the attack, the prosecutor’s office said.
The man was arrested later on Saturday in Nîmes after an exchange of gunfire with police officers. The man fired blanks but was injured in the arm and chest by return fire, the prosecutor’s office said.
Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, had previously said that the man had a criminal record for several minor offenses, but the prosecutor’s office said he had been convicted only once, in 2022, for driving while intoxicated.
The prosecutor’s office said that the man had driven alone to the synagogue on the night before the attack and slept in his car nearby. On Saturday, shortly before 8:30 a.m., he climbed a wall surrounding the synagogue complex carrying plastic bottles filled with fuel and set multiple fires, burning two cars.
The man briefly hid in the synagogue complex, which had led Mr. Darmanin to suggest last week that he might have been waiting to attack people leaving the building.
But the prosecutor’s office said that the man had left quickly, accidentally setting his car on fire as he fled and abandoning the vehicle before meeting at a nearby market with the acquaintance who drove him back to Nîmes.
Read More: Algerian Man Charged Over Synagogue Arson Attack in France
