2023-11-01 03:01:00
French police shot and wounded a woman who shouted Islamist slogans and threatened to immolate herself on a train headed to the French capital, amid a high alert in the country that coincides with the escalation of violence in the Middle East. The woman, who was wearing a full veil, was already arrested for similar events in 2021 and has a history of psychiatric problems. France has recorded 857 anti-Semitic acts, with 425 arrested, since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7.
The Paris Prosecutor’s Office reported in a statement that police officers fired at least 8 shots that seriously injured the woman after she refused to obey police orders and threatened to immolate herself. He also noted that an investigation was opened to find out the exact nature of the threats that the woman allegedly made while she was traveling aboard a train in the French capital and that to do so she will interview witnesses.
The woman, who was dressed in a robe that covered her entire body, faces possible charges of threatening to kill, advocating terrorism and intimidating behavior directed at the police. In addition to the investigation against the woman, another was opened into the police shooting, something that happens automatically when officers use firearms. The police body cameras and video surveillance at the station will be very useful for the investigation.
Paris police said officers acted after witnesses reported that a woman was making threats. Government spokesman Olivier Veran said the woman “made comments of an Islamist nature” that alerted other passengers. According to Paris Police Chief Laurent Nuñez, the woman shouted “Allah is the greatest”, “Boom” and “Now you all are going to see.”
The police officers isolated the woman, who at a certain point walked towards them without obeying orders to not move and put her hands in sight. They then fired an unknown number of shots. The woman was extremely seriously injured, taken to a hospital and underwent emergency surgery.
Once shot, upon searching it, it was found that it did not have explosives. After being evaluated it was then determined that she “was clearly suffering from psychiatric problems” and she was admitted to a facility. Nuñez justified the use of firearms by the police because when they intervened they considered it to be an “extremely threatening” situation since the woman gave indications that she was going to blow herself up.
The woman, 38 years old and of French nationality, had been arrested in 2021 by a military patrol. That day, “also dressed in a full veil” and carrying a “screwdriver,” she made “statements of a religious nature” with a “threatening attitude,” Nuñez explained. She was briefly detained and then admitted to a hospital due to her “psychiatric disorders,” the police official added.
425 arrested for anti-Semitic acts
France has strengthened security since the October 13 attack on a school in the town of Arras, in the north of the country, where teacher Dominique Bernard was stabbed to death and three other people were injured. The murder coincided with the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas due to the attacks by the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israeli territory on October 7, which already left thousands of victims on both sides.
“Anti-Semitism is cowardice, it is hatred of one’s neighbor and those guilty of these acts must be arrested and condemned,” stressed the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, in the government control session before the National Assembly, where reference was made to the graffiti. anti-Semites that appeared in Paris and in different cities on the city’s outskirts.
In the last few hours, the Stars of David have proliferated on the facades of Jewish homes and businesses. The prime minister, who noted that since October 7 “the manifestations of hate have multiplied”, condemned these events “with the greatest firmness”, insisted that “attacking someone for being Jewish is attacking our strongest values, “What unites us is attacking the soul of the Republic.”
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who was in charge of giving the figures of the anti-Semitic acts recorded and those arrested, first in the National Assembly and then in a Jewish community center in the city of Levallois-Perret, specified that there is a slogan of “firmness” so that the residence permit of foreign authors is withdrawn.
Darmanin specified that of the 425 detainees, 125 are foreigners and there are already 27 in centers with a view to their expulsion. And he detailed, without giving details about his nationality, that one was expelled for having written “death to the Jews.” France has the largest community of Jews in Europe, representing around one percent of the population, and also the largest community of Muslims on the Old Continent, with millions of people originating mainly from the Maghreb.
France raised the alert level for terrorism since the Hamas attack on Israeli territory, in particular with reinforced protection measures in synagogues, educational centers and Jewish community centers, 950 in total, especially with patrols of the 10,000 soldiers of the so-called Sentinel mission.
The Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, said this Tuesday that since October 18, a hundred bomb alarms have been received at French airports, and that given the alert level, many evacuations took place, something that has also happened in places like the Palace of Versailles or the Louvre Museum. None of those alerts came to fruition.
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