Today's Date:

Prosecutors in [Paris suburb] Créteil sought prison sentences ranging from 18 months to two years on Thursday, [September 22] for four young men accused of throwing two Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Kremlin-Bicêtre. The projectiles did not cause a fire.

The young men, all 22, denied hurling two bottles filled with gasoline and equipped with wicks against the door of the synagogue.

They were held for questioning on April 4, 2002, while trying to escape a police check; they were in possession of a gasoline-soaked glove and a lighter, and were driving in a stolen Mercedes without lights not far from the synagogue just minutes after the incident.

The state prosecutor asked for two years' imprisonment and an arrest warrant for one of the defendants who failed to show up in court, Wicem Smondel, a classroom aide at a primary school in Kremlin-Bicêtre.

The deputy prosecutor asked for prison sentences of 18 months for the other three in court, and suggested one of them might be given a partial suspension as his police record was not as long. (...)