Small altars were erected on the sidewalk, where the three victims were shot, on which were placed their photograph as well as candles and bouquets of flowers, noted an AFP journalist.
The procession set off around 12:30 p.m. towards rue La Fayette, in the same district of the capital, where three activists from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed on January 9, 2013 in Paris.
The demonstrators chanted in Kurdish “Our martyrs do not die” and in French “Women, life, freedom”, and demanded “truth and justice”.
In Rennes, around 600 people participated Monday evening in a demonstration in tribute to the three Kurds killed on Friday, the prefecture of Ille-et-Vilaine told AFP.
There are “a lot of emotions, you can feel it in the atmosphere. For us it’s more than a racist crime,” Fehmi Kaplan, one of the organizers of the demonstration in the center of the city, told AFP. Breton capital. During the parade, demonstrators, framed by a consequent security device, launched many fireworks towards the sky.
The alleged assassin of the three PKK militants in 2013 died of cancer in 2016, a few weeks before his trial. But the civil parties obtained in 2019 the relaunch of the investigation to examine the possible involvement of the Turkish intelligence services.
Immediately after the attack, the Kurds of France spoke of a “terrorist” act and blamed Turkey.
“We decided to come as soon as we heard about this terrorist attack on Friday (…) We are afraid of the Turkish community and the secret services”, declared in English to AFP a young Kurd who came from Rotterdam to demonstrate. in Paris and who did not wish to give his surname for fear of reprisals.
The alleged perpetrator of Friday’s attack, of French nationality and aged 69, had already committed violence with a weapon in the past and indicated during his arrest that he acted because he was “racist”. He was charged with murder and attempted murder on the basis of race, ethnicity, nation or religion and imprisoned.