A French Court Acquitted a Nanny Who Poisoned a Jewish Family of Antisemitism. Now Prosecutors Are Appealing.

Prosecutors in France have appealed a court ruling that convicted a nanny of poisoning the food of the Jewish family for whom she worked but cleared her of antisemitism charges, in the latest flashpoint as French authorities grapple with an ongoing nationwide surge in antisemitism.

On Tuesday, the public prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, just west of Paris, announced it had appealed a criminal court ruling that acquitted the family’s nanny of antisemitism-aggravated charges after she poisoned their food and drinks.

Last week, the 42-year-old Algerian woman was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “administering a harmful substance that caused incapacitation for more than eight days.”

Residing illegally in France, the nanny had worked as a live-in caregiver for the family and their three children — aged two, five, and seven — since November 2023.

The French court declined to uphold any antisemitism charges against the defendant, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present

The family’s lawyers described the ruling as “incomprehensible,” insisting that “justice has not been served.”

The nanny, who has been living in France in violation of a deportation order issued in February 2024, was also convicted of using a forged document — a Belgian national identity card — and barred from entering France for five years.

First reported by Le Parisien, the shocking incident occurred in January last year, just two months after the caregiver was hired, when the mother discovered cleaning products in the wine she drank and suffered severe eye pain from using makeup remover contaminated with a toxic substance, prompting her to call the police.

After a series of forensic tests, investigators detected polyethylene glycol — a chemical commonly used in industrial and pharmaceutical products — along with other toxic substances in the food consumed by the family and their three children. 

According to court documents, these chemicals were described as “harmful, even corrosive, and capable of causing serious injuries to the digestive tract.”

Even though the nanny initially denied the charges against her, she later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’s food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”

“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”

According to her lawyer, the nanny later withdrew her confession, arguing that jealousy and a perceived financial grievance were the main factors behind the attack.

At trial, the defendant described her statements as “hateful” but denied that her actions were driven by racism or antisemitism.

The appeal comes as France continues to face a steep rise in antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

In a disturbing new case, French authorities have also opened an investigation after a social media video went viral showing a man harassing a young Jewish child at a Paris airport, shouting “free Palestine” and calling him a “pig.”

Widely circulated online, the video shows a young boy playing a video game at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport when a man approaches, grabs his toy, and begins verbally assaulting him.

“Are you gonna free Palestine, bro?” the man, who remains off-camera, yells at the boy. 

“If you don’t free them, I’ll snatch your hat off, bro,” the assailant continues, referring to the child’s kippah.

ANTISEMITIC INCIDENT AT PARIS–CDG AIRPORT :

Wednesday, June 25, 2025, at around 7:00 a.m, in the PlayStation Zone of Terminal 2B at Paris–Charles de Gaulle Airport, a man in his early 30s, speaking with a British accent , verbally and physically targeted two… pic.twitter.com/8XY3ze0EYb

— SwordOfSalomon (@SwordOfSalomon) December 21, 2025

The man is also heard repeatedly telling the child, “Dance, pig,” while the confused and frightened boy is seen trying to comply

Local police confirmed that an investigation has been launched into the incident, classified as violence based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion, as authorities work to identify the individual and bring him to justice.

Paris police chief Patrice Faure expressed his “outrage at these unacceptable and intolerable remarks,” promising that the incident “will not go unpunished.”

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — condemned the incident, calling it “yet another illustration of the climate of antisemitism that has prevailed in Europe” since the Hamas-led atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.