In early September, nine pig heads, some with President Emmanuel Macron's name written on them, were placed in several mosques in the Paris region. The incident caused outrage not only in the Muslim community but also in the French political scene. Initially, suspicions fell on right-wing extremists, but investigations revealed another lead.
As the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reports, Serbian police and secret services arrested 11 people from Belgrade and the surrounding area on Monday. Authorities say the arrested were acting on behalf of a foreign secret service. The investigation, first published by Le Monde, indicates that the Russian secret service is behind the attack. The organizer is believed to be a Serbian citizen, who was also involved in a paint attack on the Holocaust museum and three synagogues in Paris earlier this year.
France is home to about 6 million Muslims - the largest Muslim community in Europe - as well as half a million Jews. The latest attacks appear aimed at fomenting division in a society already polarized by the war in Gaza.
Serbian authorities say the same group also placed concrete structures with engraved messages near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, with the aim of inciting violence against certain social groups. French investigations revealed that the perpetrators used a car with Serbian license plates and a Croatian phone number, which was later traced to Belgium. To carry out the attack, they bought twelve pigs from a farmer in Normandy.
This event brings to mind similar episodes: in 2023, immediately after Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel, dozens of Jewish families in Paris were targeted with David symbols on their walls – also an operation ordered by networks linked to Russia.
According to Tages-Anzeiger, there are many indications that Serbia is being used by Russia as a base for sabotage operations in Europe. Recently, people were arrested in Serbia who were training Moldovan and Romanian citizens to destabilize the elections in Moldova. Germany has also been affected by the phenomenon of sabotage: in 2024, hundreds of vehicles were damaged in several states. Three of the arrested people had Serbian, Bosnian and German documents. One of them said that they had been recruited by a Russian, who had promised them 100 euros for each damaged vehicle.