The man suspected of killing three people and wounding three others Friday near a Kurdish cultural center in Paris confirmed to a policeman upon his arrest that he did so because he was a “racist,” as a source close to the ongoing investigations said Saturday to determine his motives.
The source told AFP that the suspect, who was seized before the police intervened, was arrested with a “small bag” containing “two or three magazines full of cartridges, and a box of 45-caliber cartridges containing at least 25 cartridges,” confirming information published by the French weekly “Le Journal du Dimanche”.
At the same time, investigations continue, Saturday, to determine the reasons that prompted this 69-year-old man, who was prosecuted in the past for a racist attack, to commit this act.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “despicable attack” that “targeted the Kurds of France.” At his request, the Paris police chief will receive Kurdish community officials on Saturday morning. They announced a Kurdish demonstration on Saturday afternoon in Paris.
The incidents took place in a street near a Kurdish cultural center in a lively commercial neighborhood frequented by the Kurdish community. The shooter, who had committed gun violence in the past, was arrested shortly after the tragedy and is under investigation.
The French authorities did not leak any details about the victims, “who are not known to the French police,” as French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
However, the spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France, Ajit Polat, said that one of them is a Kurdish artist who is a political refugee 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, “which was rejected by the French authorities.”
An investigation was opened into murders, attempted murders, planned acts of violence with weapons, and violations of the gun law.
The alleged shooter, who was slightly wounded in the face during his arrest, is known by 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 verdict.
And the man was also charged in December 2021 with committing acts of violence of a racist nature, premeditatedly using weapons and causing damage for acts committed on December 8, 2021.
In this second case, he is suspected of having wounded migrants with a knife in a camp in Paris and vandalized their tents, a police source said at the time.
After his precautionary detention for a year, 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 given a suspended six-month prison sentence for weapons possession.
On the other hand, Darmanan said that he is not known in the files of the country’s intelligence and the General Directorate of Internal Security and “was not classified as a member of the extreme right.”
The Public Prosecutor said that the hypothesis of a terrorist attack was excluded at this stage of the investigations.
The father of the 90-year-old suspect told AFP that his son, on the morning of the accident, “didn’t say anything when he left the house (…) he was crazy,” noting that he tends to be “silent” and “closed.”
Darmanan explained that he “wanted to attack foreigners” and “it is clear that he acted alone,” noting that he was frequenting a shooting range.
He stressed that “it is not certain that the killer who wanted to kill these people (…) did so to specifically target the Kurds,” while the Kurdish community is circulating rumors of a “political” attack.
“The racial motives of the facts” will “certainly be part of the investigations,” Laure-Bicoux said during a press conference. “There is no evidence, at this stage, of any affiliation with this man to an extremist ideological movement,” it added Friday evening in a statement.
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 he is just an extreme right-wing activist (…) who came to commit this attack on our headquarters,” said council spokesman Ajit Polat, in a press conference in a restaurant 100 meters away from the scene of the attack.
He added, “The political situation in Turkey with regard to the Kurdish movement clearly leads us to believe that these are political assassinations,” before adding that “the council believes that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish state are behind these assassinations.”
A police source told AFP that violence broke out Friday with the police and one person was arrested.
Abroad, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the shooting as a “horrific act” and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his “deepest condolences”.