French police suspect that people who put pigs' heads outside Paris mosques on Monday night were acting under orders from a foreign intelligence service, probably Russian.
The heads were found on Tuesday morning outside nine mosques in central Paris and surrounding suburbs, prompting a wave of outrage and condemnation.
Investigators have now said the two people involved drove a Serb-registered car, used a Croatian mobile telephone, and crossed into Belgium a few hours later.
The incident has striking similarities with other recent provocations – notably the daubing of Stars of David on Paris walls in October 2023, and the painting of red hands on the city's Holocaust memorial in May 2024.
Police identified a Moldovan connection in the first case, and in the second, four Bulgarians are due to stand trial in October.
The prosecutor in the red hands affair stated that it appeared to be an attempt to destabilise France orchestrated by Russian intelligence.
Russia and Iran have both been named by French intelligence as countries liable to provoke dissension in France through dirty tricks.
Police investigating the latest affair were approached by a Normandy farmer who reported he had sold about 10 pigs' heads to two men driving a Serbian-registered car.
This same car was captured on CCTV footage in the Oberkampf region of eastern Paris on Monday evening, subsequently appearing near the mosques.
Police said they were able to trace the Croatian mobile phone back to the car's crossing into Belgium early on Tuesday morning.
Video footage obtained by news channel BFMTV showed a man in a white T-shirt, cap, and surgical mask placing a pig's head outside a mosque in the southwestern suburb of Malakoff. He is seen taking a photograph before leaving with a rucksack.
At roughly the same time, another individual was recorded doing the same outside a mosque in the eastern suburb of Montreuil.
In the Stars of David affair, the perpetrators were also noted taking photographs of their work, interpreted as a way to prove their actions and facilitate a subsequent social media campaign.
Two other incidents over the past year have also attracted investigative interest.
In June 2024, stencilled images of coffins were found on walls in Paris, with tags reading Stop the deaths now and Mirages [jets] for Ukraine. Simultaneously, five actual coffins draped in French flags were placed in front of the Eiffel Tower labeled French dead in Ukraine. In both cases, police have identified suspects of Moldovan origin.
An intelligence report linked to the prosecution's file in the red hands case indicated that Russian intelligence employs strategies aimed at spreading misinformation and fostering divisions within French society.
This is achieved through the utilization of proxies – individuals not directly engaged with Russian intelligence but contracted to carry out assigned tasks, often compensated via intermediaries in neighboring countries.
French intelligence agency Viginum, monitoring social media use, reported evidence of Russian-linked accounts spreading information about the red hands incident, utilizing thousands of fake accounts on X.
