The last remaining synagogue in Algiers was desecrated last week by vandals who tore the Torah scrolls, ripped prayer books and broke pews and benches.
Algerian police announced over the weekend that eight suspects, all teen-agers, have been arrested and will be brought shortly to trial.
The synagogue, the last one in a city where over 100,000 Jews lived prior to Algeria’s independence, was practically “put to pieces” according to eyewitnesses quoted by the French press.
Algerian Interior Minister El Hadi Khedri met last Thursday with the president of the local Jewish community, Roger Said, to promise that the police had been ordered to find the vandals as swiftly as possible.
The police said Friday that robbery was the motive and that some of the stolen objects have since been recovered in local stores.
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