December 25, 2022, 10:58 AM
December 25, 2022, 10:58 AM
The French pensioner suspected of having killed three Kurds andn Friday in Paris, he first went to a town on the outskirts of the capital to “murder migrants”, driven by a “pathological hatred”, the prosecutor’s office announced this Sunday.
The 69-year-old man was transferred to a psychiatric unit on Saturday. from the police.
Since the attack, which left three dead and three injured –already out of danger–, the track of the racist crime prevails.
Following his arrest shortly after the events, the alleged murderer told security agents that he had done so because he was “racist”. During his detention, the man acknowledged that he felt a “hatred of foreigners that became completely pathological” since a robbery of which he was the victim in 2016, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
The suspect described as a “depressive” person with “suicidal” tendencies, he added. He also assured that he had “always” wanted to “murder migrants, foreigners, from the theft.”
On Friday morning, he went to the city of Saint-Denis, on the northern outskirts of Paris, with a weapon, “an 11.43 caliber Colt 45 automatic pistol.”
Finally, “he resigned (…) because there were few people and because of the clothes he was wearingwhich prevented him from easily reloading his weapon”indicated the judicial institution.
He returned to his parents’ house, left, and headed shortly before noon to Rue Enghien, in the central 10th arrondissement of Paris, where he knew of the existence of a Kurdish cultural center, and opened fire.
– “Resentment” –
Emine Kara, a leader of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France, and two men — one of them artist and political refugee Mir Perwer — died. Three other men were injured, one of them severity, but his life is not in danger, while another has left the hospital, according to the latest balance reported this Sunday by the prosecution.
Five of the six victims had Turkish nationality; the other, French.
According to the public ministry, the alleged murderer pointed out “with rancor ‘to all migrants'”, and explained that “he attacked victims he did not know”, especially Kurds “for having taken prisoners in their fight against Daesh (Arabic acronym for the jihadist organization Islamic State) instead of killing them.”
The suspect had “intended to use all weapons and commit suicide with the last bullet”but was prevented by several people in a hairdresser before being arrested by the police.
The first elements obtained during a registration at his parents’ house, including a computer and a mobile phone, they did not allow to establish “any link with any extremist ideology”, according to the prosecutor.
– Anger and protests –
The alleged murderer indicated that he bought the weapon four years ago from a member of the shooting club to which he belonged. He hid it at her parents’ house and claimed that she had never used it before.
Already convicted in 2017 for carrying prohibited weapons and last June for using them against thieves, he was accused in December 2021 of violence, with premeditation and of a racist nature.
He is suspected of wounding a migrant with a knife in a camp in Paris, on December 8, 2021.
After a year of provisional detention, he was released on December 12, 2022.
Friday’s attack caused quite a stir in the Kurdish community, which denounced a “terrorist” act and blamed Turkey.
“The fact that our associations are attacked is of a terrorist nature and political,” said Agit Polat, spokesman for the CDK-F.
In Paris, several thousand people protested in a demonstration that ended in violent incidents.
An adviser to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned this Sunday the violence that broke out in the French capital after the attack and blamed it on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). “That’s the PKK in France,” declared Ibrahim Kalin, posting photos of overturned and burned cars.
