Lhe French pensioner who admitted to having killed three Kurds on Friday in Paris, had first intended to “murder migrants” in a city north of the capital, with a large population of foreign origin, driven by “a pathological hatred,” the prosecution said on Sunday.
The 69-year-old man saw his police custody lifted on Saturday for health reasons and was hospitalized in the psychiatric infirmary of the police headquarters. Since the attack, which left three dead and three injured – the latter were out of danger on Sunday – the track of racist crime is privileged.
As soon as he was arrested shortly after the fact, the alleged shooter told the police that he had done so because he was “racist”. In police custody, he admitted a “hate of foreigners that has become pathological” since a burglary of which he was the victim in 2016, said Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau in a press release.
He described himself as “depressive” and “suicidal”. “But before committing suicide, I always wanted to murder migrants, foreigners, since this burglary,” he said in police custody.
What happened
Early Friday, he traveled to the town of Saint-Denis with his weapon, “a Colt 45 11.43 caliber automatic pistol.” But, “he finally gives up taking action, given the few people present and because of his dress preventing him from reloading his weapon easily”, indicated the prosecutor. He then returned to his parents, then came out and went 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.
Emine Kara, a leader of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France – and two men, including artist and political refugee Mir Perwer, died under his bullets. Three men were injured, one seriously, but their lives are no longer in danger and one of them has left the hospital, according to the latest report released by the prosecutor on Sunday.
Five of the six victims are of Turkish nationality, the last French.
Why the Turkish community?
“Indicating that he is angry with ‘all the migrants’, he explains that he 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 for the jihadist organization Islamic State, editor’s note) instead of killing them”, affirmed the public ministry.
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 obtained during a search of his parents, including the seizure of a computer and a smartphone, did not establish “any link with an extremist ideology”, according to the prosecutor.
Known to the police
The suspect claimed to have acquired his weapon four years ago from a member of the shooting club to which he belonged at the time, now deceased, she added. He had hidden it at his parents’ house and assured that he had never used it before.
Already convicted in 2017 for carrying a prohibited weapon and last June for violence with weapons on burglars – the facts he mentioned in police custody -, he is indicted in December 2021 for violence with weapons, with premeditation and racist.
