The man suspected of killing three people and wounding three others on Friday near a Kurdish cultural center in Paris confirmed to a police officer upon his arrest that he did so because he was a “racist,” a source said on Saturday close to the ongoing investigation to determine her motives.
The source told AFP that the suspect, who was seized before police intervention, was arrested with a “small bag” containing “two or three magazines full of cartridges and a box of .45 cartridges containing at least 25 cartridges”, confirming information published by the French weekly “Le Journal du Dimanche”.
At the same time, investigations continue on Saturday to determine the reasons that prompted this 69-year-old man, who has been tried in the past for a racist attack, to commit this act.
French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the “despicable attack” which “targets the Kurds of France”. At his request, the Paris police chief will receive officials from the Kurdish community on Saturday morning. They announced a Kurdish demonstration on Saturday afternoon in Paris.
The incidents took place on a street near a Kurdish cultural center in a bustling commercial district frequented by the Kurdish community. The shooter, who had committed armed violence in the past, was arrested shortly after the tragedy and is under investigation.
French authorities have not leaked any details about the victims, “which are not known to the French police,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
However, the spokesman of the Kurdish Democratic Council in France, Ajit Polat, said that one of them is a Kurdish political refugee artist and is “persecuted in Turkey because of his art”, and the second man is an “ordinary Kurdish citizen”. who visits the association “daily”. He explained that among the dead was a woman who had applied for political asylum, “who was rejected by the French authorities”.
An investigation has been opened into murders, attempted murders, planned acts of violence with weapons and violations of the law on weapons.
The alleged shooter, who was slightly injured in the face during his arrest, is known to the judiciary.
He was sentenced last June to 12 months in prison for committing acts of violence with a weapon in 2016. He has appealed the sentence.
And the man was also reported in December 2021 for committing acts of violence of a racist nature, premeditated use of weapons and causing damage for acts committed on December 8, 2021.
In this second case, he is suspected of stabbing migrants with a knife in a field in Paris and vandalizing their tents, a police source said at the time.
After his one-year pre-trial detention, he was released on December 12 in accordance with the law and placed under judicial supervision, said Laure Picou, the Paris prosecutor.
racial motive?
In 2017, the man was sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence for possession of a weapon.
On the other hand, Darmanan said he was not known in the country’s intelligence archives and the Directorate General of Internal Security and “was not classified as a member of the far right”.
The public prosecutor stated that the hypothesis of a terrorist attack had been ruled out at this stage of the investigation.
The father of the 90-year-old suspect told AFP that his son, on the morning of the crash, “didn’t say anything when he left the house (…) he was crazy”, noting that he tends to be “quiet” and “withdrawn” .
Darmanan explained that he “wanted to attack foreigners” and “it is clear that he acted alone”, noting that he frequented a shooting range.
He stressed that “it is not certain that the assassin who wanted to kill these people (…) did so to specifically target the Kurds”, while rumors of a “political” attack were circulating in the Kurdish community.
“The racial motivations of the facts” will “certainly be part of the investigation,” Laure-Picot said during a press conference. “There is no evidence, at this stage, of any affiliation of this man to an extremist ideological movement,” she added in a statement on Friday evening.
But the Kurdish Democratic Council in France said it was “unacceptable” not to describe the shooting as a “terrorist attack”.
“It is unacceptable not to talk about the terrorist character and try to suggest that it is just a far right activist (…) who has come to commit this attack on our headquarters,” council spokesman Ajit Polat said in a statement. press conference in a restaurant 100 meters from the site of the attack.
He added: “The political situation in Turkey regarding the Kurdish movement clearly leads us to believe that these are political assassinations,” before adding that “the council believes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and him are behind these assassinations. Turkish state”.
A police source told AFP that violence erupted with police on Friday and one person was arrested.
Abroad, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the shooting as a “horrible act” and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his “deepest condolences”.
