(Paris) The alleged French killer of three Kurds on Friday in Paris was charged and jailed on Monday as the French ambassador to Ankara was summoned for “anti-Turkey propaganda”.
Suspect, a 69-year-old retired train driver who admitted to having a ‘pathological hatred of foreigners’, has been charged with murder and attempted murder on the basis of race, ethnicity, nation or religion , as well as for unauthorized acquisition and possession of weapons, according to a judicial source.
During the day, several hundred people had gathered for a march in tribute to the victims.
In addition to the three Kurds shot dead in the center of Paris – Emine Kara, a leader of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France, and two men, including artist and political refugee Mir Perwer – the suspect injured three men, including a seriously. Five of the six victims are of Turkish nationality, the last French.
Friday’s attack shocked the Kurdish community, which denounced a “terrorist” act and blamed Turkey.
In reaction, the French ambassador to Turkey was summoned by the Turkish government on Monday, Ankara protesting against what it perceives as “anti-Turkey propaganda” in France since the murder of the three Kurds.
“We expressed our dissatisfaction with the propaganda launched by the circles of the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan) against our country, the French government and certain politicians being used as instruments of propaganda,” said a Turkish diplomatic source.
Monday, small altars with photographs of the victims, candles and flowers, had been erected on the sidewalk where the three victims were shot, noted an AFP journalist.
A march took participants to another street in the neighborhood where three Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activists were killed on January 9, 2013 in Paris, an unsolved case.
“Truth and Justice”
The demonstrators chanted in Kurdish “Our martyrs do not die” and in French “Women, life, freedom”, while demanding “truth and justice”.
The racist motive for the murders seems proven: the suspect, described as “depressive” and “suicidal”, told investigators that he had always “wanted to murder migrants, foreigners” after being robbed in 2016, according to the prosecutor of Paris, Laure Beccuau.
PHOTO SARAH MEYSSONNIER, REUTERS
The suspect went Friday shortly before noon rue d’Enghien, in the center of Paris, where he knew of the existence of a Kurdish cultural center, and opened fire.
On Friday, he first went to Saint-Denis, a popular town north of Paris, with “a Colt 45 automatic pistol of 11.43 caliber”, to “commit murders on foreign people”, according to the prosecutor.
But he gave up “to take action, given the few people present and because of his dress preventing him from reloading his weapon easily”, she specified.
He then returned to his parents, then went shortly before noon to a neighborhood where he knew of the existence of a Kurdish cultural center, where he opened fire.
Already condemned
“Indicating that he is angry with “all migrants”, he claims to have attacked victims he did not know, specifying that he is angry with the Kurds” for having taken “prisoners during their fight against Daesh (acronym in Arabic of the jihadist organization Islamic State) instead of killing them,” the prosecution said.
He “intended to use all the ammunition and kill himself with the last bullet”, but was stopped by several people at a nearby hair salon before being arrested by the police.
The first elements of the investigation did not make it possible to establish “any link with an extremist ideology”.
Already convicted in 2017 for carrying a prohibited weapon and in June for violence with weapons on burglars – the facts he mentioned in police custody – he has been charged since December 2021 for violence with weapons, with premeditation and character. racist.
He is suspected of having stabbed migrants at a camp in Paris on December 8, 2021. After a year in pre-trial detention, he was released on December 12.
That the track of the terrorist attack was not retained from the outset aroused anger and incomprehension. Demonstrations in tribute to the victims, sometimes interspersed with violence and degradation, were organized on Saturday in several French cities.