Five dead including a Frenchman. This is the latest assessment of the attack on a synagogue in Djerba in Tunisia on Tuesday evening. On Thursday, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) announced that it was opening an investigation into the death of this 41-year-old Franco-Tunisian. The Pnat, competent because of the French nationality of one of the victims, opened Wednesday “an investigation of the head of assassination in relation to a terrorist enterprise. The investigations were entrusted to the General Directorate of Internal Security, ”he said.
The attack, which took place as hundreds of worshipers completed the annual Jewish pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, the oldest in Africa, left five dead: three gendarmes and two worshippers, an Israeli-Tunisian and the Franco-Tunisian, killed in front of the synagogue by the assailant’s shots.
A criminal investigation opened in Tunisia
On the Tunisian side, “a preliminary criminal investigation has been opened,” Fethi Bakkouche, spokesperson for the court in Medenine (southeast), on which the island of Djerba depends, told AFP.
“The attack on the Ghriba synagogue upsets us. We think with pain of the victims, of the Tunisian people, our friends. We stand with the family of our murdered compatriot,” responded President Emmanuel Macron in a message posted on Twitter. The Central Consistory of France on Wednesday condemned this attack “as cowardly as it is odious”.
Benjamin Haddad was a baker in Marseille, a man “with a big heart”, from “a very pious family”, evokes Roland Elbez, political adviser to Michel Cohen-Tenoudji, the president of the Israelite consistory of Marseille. On the evening of the tragedy, he was accompanied by his cousin Aviel, also killed by the assailant.