Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

An Algerian woman residing illegally in France is set to stand trial on Tuesday on antisemitism-aggravated charges after admitting to poisoning the food of the Jewish family that employed her as a nanny, in a case that has intensified public outrage amid a surge of antisemitic attacks across the country.

The 42-year-old nanny, who has worked as a live-in caregiver for a family with three children aged two, five, and seven since November 2023, will now appear at the criminal court in Nanterre, just west of Paris, accused of poisoning them by contaminating their food and drinks with toxic substances, according to French media.

She is expected to face multiple charges, including “administering a harmful substance that caused more than eight days of incapacity for racial or religious reasons.”

The nanny, who has been living in France in violation of a deportation order issued in February 2024, is currently in custody and faces additional charges for presenting her employers with a forged Belgian identity document.

The shocking incident, first reported by Le Parisien, in January last year occurred 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 that had been 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.”

When the mother explained that only her family and the nanny had access to the house, she was promptly taken into police custody for questioning.

Even though she initially denied the charges against her, the nanny 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, Solange Marel, the nanny has withdrawn her confession, maintaining that there is no proof of an antisemitic motive and that jealousy and a perceived financial grievance were the primary factors.

She also emphasized that the substances were found only in the parents’ drinks, not the children’s.

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — is set to appear before the court on Tuesday as a witness for the family. 

He described the case as “revealing of structural violence, whose singular severity should neither be minimized nor concealed.”