Quai Branly: a man arrested after tearing down seven works of art

Fear at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum, Wednesday September 27. In the afternoon, a man was arrested after tearing down seven Iranian wall carpets, according to Le Parisien. Apparently disturbed, he was transferred to the psychiatric infirmary of the police headquarters, after briefly passing through the 7th arrondissement police station.

“We are really on a high with drooling on our lips,” a witness told the daily, speaking anonymously. Europe 1 specifies that the suspect shouted “Allah Akbar” and made “incoherent comments”. Without any papers on him at the time of the arrest, the individual could not immediately be identified. But still according to information from Europe 1, it is a young man of Moroccan nationality, aged 23.

The events took place around 3:45 p.m. The museum security agents then neutralized the visitor as soon as he took down the works of art. The speed of the intervention made it possible to limit the damage. According to a source close to the case, a simple “deterioration of the fixation” is to be deplored. A complaint could nevertheless be filed by the museum.

This is not the first time this Parisian institution has been broken into. In 2020, a group of five activists, denouncing the “dispossession of Africa of its wealth”, tore a 19th century Bari funeral pole from its base, before being apprehended by the police. The activists, prosecuted for “attempted theft”, received fines ranging between 250 and 1000 euros.