EXCLUSIVE. Leila, a 42-year-old Algerian woman under an OQTF (Obligation to Leave French Territory), appeared in custody this Tuesday before the Nanterre Criminal Court for administering harmful products with the aggravating circumstance of anti-Semitism.
Never before in France had a nanny been accused of targeting a Jewish family because of their religion. The events, as serious as they are unprecedented, took place within the privacy of a home in the Paris region and affected a couple with three young children aged 2, 5, and 7.
Leïla Y., 42, an Algerian woman with no children and under an order to leave French territory (OQTF) since February 2024, is to be tried this Tuesday, December 9, before the Nanterre Criminal Court ( Hauts-de-Seine ), notably for “administering a harmful substance resulting in incapacity exceeding eight days, committed on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.” The employee, detained since February 2024, is accused of having put toxic household products in the family’s food and drinks. The case is set against the backdrop of the age-old antisemitic prejudice linking Jews, money, and power.
The events date back to January 2024, two months after the couple hired the employee as a live-in nanny. To secure the position, the Algerian nanny provided her employers with a copy of her Belgian national identity card. This falsified document is also the reason for her prosecution.
In wine, grape juice, pasta, makeup remover…
On January 30th, her employer went to the police station, distraught. A few days earlier, she had drunk wine that tasted like cleaning products. Her makeup remover had burned her eyes in an unusual way. The previous evening, a few minutes after the nanny had left, the mother noticed foam on a bottle of grape juice and a bleach smell in the wine. A pasta dish with whiskey, eaten without any problem the day before, had a “perfume taste.”
No one had access to the secure home except the couple, their children, and the nanny. She was left alone with them on Monday between 5:15 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Police seized the suspicious containers and cleaning products: an “All Purpose Cleaner” spray and a bleach-based “WC Activ” toilet cleaner.
On February 3, the 5-year-old girl revealed to her mother that she had seen “Nadine” (the name the nanny preferred to use in front of everyone ) transferring a soapy product into a bottle of alcohol labeled “Jerusalem”.Toxicological analyses are conclusive: massive levels of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and chemical agents were found in wine, whisky, fig brandy, grape juice, and even pasta. These products are “harmful, even corrosive, and can cause serious injuries to the digestive tract,” states the committal order from the criminal court.
“Because they have money and power.”
Placed in police custody on February 5, 2024, Leïla Y. initially denied the allegations. Then, during the search of her home, she blurted out to the police: “Because they have money and power, I should never have worked for a Jewish woman; she only brought me trouble.”This statement, recorded in the official report, constitutes the basis for the aggravating circumstance charge for the investigating judge. These remarks “convey anti-Semitic stereotypes about the relationship to power and money” and reveal that “Leïla Y. made anti-Semitic remarks directly related to the offense,” the investigating magistrate notes in his report.
While in police custody, the woman admitted to pouring a “soap-based lotion” into the food, describing it as a “punishment” and a “warning” following salary disputes with her employers. “I was angry, they were disrespecting me,” she explained, adding, “I knew it might cause them pain, but not enough to kill them.”
The defense disputes the anti-Semitic nature of the attack.
Her lawyer, Solange Marle, indicates that her client has since retracted her confession and firmly contests the antisemitic charge. According to her lawyer, the nanny’s primary motivation stemmed from deep jealousy.
“The statements made in question remain focused on a class issue and financial resentment,” argues the lawyer, specifying that “the substances in question were found only in the parents’ drinks, not the children’s.” The psychiatric evaluation of the accused concluded that she did not suffer from any disorder that would have eliminated or impaired her judgment.The testimony of a security guard at the Jewish school where the children are enrolled confirms the financial dispute but also the anti-Semitic prejudice linked to money: “She was complaining about this family, saying they were stingy, that they didn’t want to pay her more, not even for a euro. Then she said the famous line to me: ‘
But they have money, they can give it to me .'”Analysis of the nanny’s phone revealed Google searches in December 2023 for the victims’ identities, as well as for “Berber Jewish women” and “religious practices of Judaism.” ORTC listed “several posts related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” on its Facebook page.
Furthermore, during their interviews, the children reported that the nanny “regularly asked them questions about religion” and that the younger child saw her “repeatedly knock on mezuzots,” Jewish religious objects affixed to the front door of a house. The employee denies this.
Initially, the alleged perpetrator was charged with “attempted poisoning”, but the charges were reclassified: expert reports did not establish that the products poured were “of a nature to cause death”, a legal condition for poisoning.
The context of the surge in antisemitism after October 7, 2023
As for the aggravating charge of antisemitism, it was only brought into the case during the ORTC hearings, and against the advice of the public prosecutor’s office, which had rejected it. This stance was deemed “scandalous” by Patrick Klugman and Sacha Ghozlan, the family’s lawyers, who denounced the “minimal” judicial treatment, highlighting a “gap between political rhetoric and the concrete application of the law.”“Yet this is a particularly well-documented and illuminating case concerning the reality of everyday or pervasive antisemitism,” observes Mr. Ghozlan. For Mr. Klugman, this act is part of a broader context of escalating antisemitic attacks in France following the
October 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel by Hamas. “Rich in antisemitic prejudice, this individual acted in a context of passion and propaganda against Israelis and Jews. She transforms herself into a vigilante of her hatred and attacks this family in their health and privacy.”The lawyers, who perceive “intimate antisemitism” in this case, have called
Yonathan Arfi, president of the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France), as a witness. Arfi, who is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in this trial (in which the UEJF and LICRA will be civil parties), believes that this case “reveals a structural violence, the singular gravity of which must neither be minimized nor concealed.”
