May 1, 2013

(JTA) — The Iranian man who last week attacked a rabbi in Paris committed an earlier assault on a French Jew nearby, the French Jewish community’s security service has said.

The man, whom police arrested on April 23 for lightly wounding the rabbi and his son with a knife, attacked a young man four days earlier with a iron bar as the victim was exiting a synagogue on Buffault Street in Paris’ 9th arrondissement, according to a statement sent out Tuesday by the SPCJ security service.

The victim of the first attack was hit several times on the head. The rabbi who was attacked last week suffered a cut to his throat and his son received cuts to his upper body but neither was seriously injured.

Police were able to establish a link between the two incidents due to video surveillance, SPCJ added.

SPCJ also said the attacker, a man in his late 20s, had escaped from a psychiatric institution near Lyon in eastern France earlier this month. 

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