The Strasbourg city council announced on Tuesday, November 5, its intention to file a complaint following the damage suffered by the stele erected in tribute to the victims of the Christmas market attack that occurred in the Alsatian capital in 2018. “The stele in the Plaza de la República, erected in memory of the numerous victims of the terrorist attack that engulfed our city on December 11, 2018, was vandalized last night”lamented the environmentalist mayor, Jeanne Barseghian, in a statement.
The stele, imagined by one of the victims of the attack, is a transparent cube approximately one meter high on whose walls the silhouettes of the cathedral and the roofs of Strasbourg are drawn. At least one of the cube’s faces is broken.
“Designed in collaboration with the victims and their families, it inscribes in public space the memory of this atrocious act that marked the entire city and beyond, and that remembers the memory of the five people murdered”the press release continues. “Jeanne Barseghian, mayor of Strasbourg, and Jacques Witkowski, prefect of the Bas-Rhin, condemn in the strongest possible terms the unacceptable deterioration of this place of contemplation where we will meet again on December 11. »
“This attack shook our city”
Several Alsatian elected officials also reacted, such as Lower Rhine senator Elsa Schalck (Les Républicains), MEP Fabienne Keller (Ensemble) or deputy Thierry Sother (Socialist Party). “I am angry to know that the stele erected in the Place de la République, in Strasbourg, in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack of December 11, 2018, has been vandalized. This attack shook our city. “We must honor and transmit the memory of the missing and injured.”Mr. Sother wrote on the social network.
On the afternoon of December 11, 2018, after having sworn allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) organization, a radicalized young man killed five people and injured eleven others in the busy streets of the Alsatian city. Police shot him dead after two days of tracking him down.
