Algerian Police on Wednesday arrested a man after he chiseled off the face and breasts of a 120-year-old French sculpture of a naked woman in Algeria’s Setif town for being ‘un-Islamic’.
“Armed with a hammer and chisel, a man started attacking a statue on a fountain in the northern Algerian town of Sétif on Monday morning. The Ain El Fouara fountain is a symbolic statue in the town that has been vandalised before by strict Islamists. Passers-by watched as the man chiselled off the face and breasts of the female figure, before he was arrested,” reported a France-based media outlet.
Les ennemis de la culture, les ennemis de l’art, les ennemis de la beauté.
Mais surtout les ennemis de la femme. Même en statue, ça les provoque !
La Fontaine de Ain El Fouara, monument emblématique de la ville de Sétif
Pauvre #Algérie pic.twitter.com/VuoYqbKZUY— Waleed Al-husseini (@W_Alhusseini) December 18, 2017
Despite repeated attempts by the passer-by to discourage the culprit, one man eventually managed to get up on the statue with a stick in his hand, forcing the man to protect himself, which allowed another man to wrestle his hammer off him.
Police officers later arrived at the scene and arrest him with the help of citizens. The statue was damaged by a homemade bomb in 1997 and also attacked by a man with a hammer in 2006.
The Ain El Fouara is a work by French sculptor Francis de Saint-Vidal. Unveiled in 1898, it became a symbolic monument in the town ever since and is popular among locals.