French Neo-Nazi Museum Guard Adds Art Theft to a Long Criminal Resume
Published on Friday, 04 January 2013 23:57 Written by Kate Deimling
Emmanuel Rist, a former guard at the Unterlinden Museum (pictured) in Colmar in Alsace, was convicted today of stealing 17 artworks from the museum, including pieces by Alsatian illustrator Hansi, Italian painter Alberto Magnelli, and French painter Roger Bissière, AFP reports.
Rist, who is “well-known in Alsatian neo-Nazi circles,” was sentenced to a year in prison, but this is just a formality, since he is already serving a 30-year prison term, the maximum established by French law, for murdering a Moroccan shopkeeper in 2001 (he was convicted in 2011).
Rist also seriously injured a retired Moroccan man in 2005 by blowing up his cottage (he was found guilty in 2009) and defiled a Jewish cemetery in 2004 (for which he was convicted in 2007). Between 2004 and 2006, Rist was employed as a night watchman at the Unterlinden Museum, which leads us to ask, “Hello?? Background check?!”
Credit: ArtInfo