The 69-year-old French retiree suspected of having killed three Kurds on Friday and wounded three others in Paris, who recognized a “pathological hatred of foreigners”, was formally charged today and preventively detained, a judicial source indicated.
The suspect, a former train conductor, was charged with murder and attempted murder based on race, ethnicity, nation and religion, as well as unauthorized acquisition and possession of a weapon, the same source was quoted as saying by the France news agency. – Press (AFP).
Today hundreds of people gathered again in Paris for a march in honor of the victims.
Along with the three Kurds shot dead in central Paris, Emine Kara, leader of the Kurdish women’s movement in France, and two men, including artist and political refugee Mir Perwer, the suspect wounded three other people, including one of gravity.
Friday’s attack sparked a strong reaction from the Kurdish community, which denounced a “terrorist” act and blamed Turkey.
In reaction, the French ambassador to Turkey was summoned today by the Turkish government, with Ankara protesting what it called “anti-Turkey propaganda” in France after the deaths of the three Kurds.
“We express our dissatisfaction with the propaganda unleashed by PKK circles [Partido dos Trabalhadores do Curdistão, a guerrilha curda] against our country, with the French government and certain politicians being used as propaganda tools,” a Turkish diplomatic source was quoted as saying by AFP.
Also today, and after a tribute to the victims on Friday, a march went through another Parisian street where on January 9, 2013, three PKK militants were assassinated, a case still to be clarified.
The demonstrators repeated in Kurdish “Our martyrs do not die” and in French “Women, life, freedom”, demanding “truth and justice”.
The racist motive for the crime perpetrated on Friday seems to be confirmed, with the suspect, defined as “depressed” and “suicidal”, revealing to investigators that he always felt the “need to kill migrants, foreigners”, after being robbed in 2016 . , said the Paris prosecutor Laure Beccau.
On Friday, he initially went to Santi-Denis, a popular neighborhood in the north of Paris, with a “Colt 45 automatic pistol, caliber 11.43”, to “commit murders against foreigners”, according to the prosecutor.
But he resigned “to practicing the act, because of the few people there were in the place and because the clothes he was wearing prevented him from easily reloading the weapon,” he explained.
Later, he returned to his parents’ house, and shortly before noon he went to a Parisian neighborhood where he knew there was a Kurdish cultural center, which he attacked with a weapon.
“Indicating that he intended to ‘hit’ all migrants, he said that he had selected victims he did not know, specifying that he wanted to hit Kurds for having taken prisoners during their fight against Daesh. [acrónimo em árabe do grupo ‘jihadista’ Estado Islâmico] instead of killing them,” the Public Ministry said.
The suspect “had the intention of using all the ammunition and committing suicide with the last bullet”, but was immobilized by several people in a nearby hairdresser before being detained by the police, the same source continues.
The first elements of the investigation did not allow establishing “any relationship with an extremist ideology.”
Already convicted in 2017 for carrying a prohibited weapon and in June for assaulting thieves with weapons -facts he mentioned during the arrest-, he was charged in December 2021 for violence with weapons, with premeditation and racist characteristics.
The detainee is also suspected of having injured migrants with a knife in a Paris camp on December 8, 2021. After a year in preventive detention, he was released on December 12.
The fact that the trail of the terrorist attack was not admitted by the authorities has given rise to riots and misunderstandings, with demonstrations since Saturday in several French cities, some of which have degenerated into riots and clashes with the police.
Source: TSF
