At 6:30 am on Tuesday, September 9, Najat Benali received a "horrified and frantic" call from her team: Upon arriving at the Javel mosque, where she serves as rector, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, they, along with a handful of worshipers who had come for the first morning prayer, discovered a pig's head covered in blue paint, lying on the ground, "with fresh blood dripping everywhere," she recounted.
Within the following hour, Benali – who is also president of the Coordination of Muslim Associations of Paris, which brings together 15 places of worship – received three more phone calls from other mosque leaders in the capital. They, too, had found bloody pig heads at their doors. One of them had been placed inside a suitcase.
According to the Paris prosecutor's office, nine Muslim places of worship were targeted on the morning of September 9, four in the French capital and five in the suburbs. "Several of the pig heads had the inscription "MACRON" written in blue ink," the prosecutor's office stated. The criminal investigation department is now handling the inquiry, which is investigating "public incitement to hatred or violence based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion," and "violence without incapacity," both with the same aggravating circumstances.
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