CHAVILLE, France A statue commemorating the World War I era massacre of Armenians was stolen, local authorities said on Saturday, two days after French lawmakers approved a controversial bill that would make it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey amounted to genocide.
 
The bronze monument, installed in front of the train station in the Paris suburb of Chaville in 2002, went missing between Friday night and Saturday morning, said authorities for the Haut-de-Seine region.
 
The police have not ruled out the possibility that the statue, which weighs several hundred kilograms (pounds), was stolen to be sold as scrap metal, said Stephane Topalian, who serves on the board of the local chapter of the Armenian church.