(European Conservative) On the night of June 2nd, Lionel M., aged 27, stole a Quran and burned it in front of the Errahma mosque in Villeurbanne, in the suburbs of Lyon. He has now been sentenced to twelve months in prison and banned from entering the municipality of Villeurbanne for two years, to the satisfaction of the local Muslim community.
Back in June, Lionel M. was quickly identified thanks to surveillance cameras installed near the mosque. He was charged with “simple theft” and “damage to property committed on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality or religion.”
Suffering from paranoid schizophrenia since the age of 18, Lionel M. attempted to justify his actions by claiming that he had been the victim of an antisemitic attack while wearing a kippah. “I didn’t want to harm Muslims, I wanted to attack a book,” he explained.
