SOLDIERS’ GRAVES DESECRATED

Local officials say eight graves of Muslim soldiers who died for France in World War II have been desecrated in a village cemetery. Maurice Duhamel, mayor of Montjoie-Saint-Martin, says he is filing a suit after Nazi symbols were discovered on October 28 on the eight graves of Muslim soldiers in France’s 2nd Armoured Division. President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the “particularly odious racist acts” and asked that those responsible be found and severely punished. Earlier, the French Council for the Muslim Faith complained that those responsible for the desecration in December of some 500 Muslim soldiers’ graves in Arras, in the north, are yet to be identified. It was the third time Muslim graves there had been desecrated.