Nanny Sentenced in France for Poisoning Jewish Family as US Ambassador Slams French Gov’t Over Rising Antisemitism

An Algerian woman residing illegally in France was sentenced on Thursday to less than three years in prison for poisoning the food of the Jewish family that employed her as a nanny, but was acquitted of antisemitism-aggravated charges — a ruling that has come amid renewed criticism of the French government’s response to rising antisemitic incidents.

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, was sentenced at the criminal court in Nanterre, just west of Paris, to two and a half years in prison for “administering a harmful substance that caused incapacitation for more than eight days,” French media reported.

However, the court declined to uphold antisemitism charges against the nanny, accused of poisoning the family by contaminating their food and drinks with toxic substances, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present.

Solange Marle, the nanny’s lawyer, praised the court’s ruling as “satisfactory.”

“Antisemitism was not at all the motive behind this act. In this case, justice was applied independently, free from political or media influence,” she told French media.

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

They said the court failed to consider the full range of converging evidence — including the children’s testimony, statements from third parties, the nanny’s social media posts, and religious objects vandalized in the house — which, they claimed, showed the antisemitic motive behind the poisoning.

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 it offered no proof of an antisemitic motive and emphasizing that jealousy and a perceived financial grievance were the main factors behind the attack.

The court’s ruling comes as international scrutiny of the French government continues to grow over the rising tide of antisemitism in the country, with US and Israeli officials calling on French authorities to take stronger action to safeguard the local Jewish community.

This week, US Ambassador Charles Kushner slammed the French government once again, accusing it of ignoring the surge in antisemitic incidents and warning that “antisemitism has long scarred French life.”

“The majority of Jews in France live in fear and they feel totally abandoned by their government,” Kushner told Time France in an interview. “France has lost its way.”

“There are so many incidents that we have kept track of and that happened in this country, and the government does absolutely nothing,” he continued. “I wouldn’t feel welcomed here if I was scared to walk around with a yarmulke on my head, or scared to put a mezuzah on my door.”

Earlier this year, the French Foreign Ministry summoned Kushner after he accused Paris of failing to act decisively against the rising antisemitism targeting France’s Jewish community.

In a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, Kushner had voiced his “deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France” and criticized the French government for its “lack of sufficient action” to confront it.

However, French authorities rejected such claims as “unacceptable” and warned that Kushner’s letter violated international law.