The police custody of the man arrested after opening fire on Friday in Paris and killing three people was lifted on Saturday for health reasons.
Two men and a woman died Friday in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, shot dead during a shootout. A man fired several times outside a Kurdish cultural center, located in a busy shopping district popular with the Kurdish community in central Paris. He also injured three men, one of them seriously, before being overpowered by several people and arrested by the police.
• What do we know about the main suspect?
The 69-year-old man is a retired train driver of French nationality. According to information from BFMTV, he said, during his arrest, that he wanted to attack the Kurdish community. It is not known, at this stage, whether he reiterated these remarks during his police custody, during his hearings.
The respondent was already known to the police and justice before the shooting on Friday. He has been indicted since December 2021 for violence with a weapon, with premeditation and of a racist nature, and degradation for acts committed on December 8, 2021. He is suspected of having stabbed migrants on a camp in Paris. and slashing their tents.
After a year in pre-trial detention, he was released on December 12, as required by French law, and placed under judicial supervision, according to the Paris prosecutor.
He was also sentenced in 2017 to a six-month suspended prison sentence for prohibited possession of weapons and, last June, to twelve months in prison for violence with weapons committed in 2016 against burglars. He appealed against this conviction.
Friday morning, “he didn’t say anything when he left (…) He’s crazy. He’s crazy,” the 90-year-old suspect’s father told AFP, describing him as “silent” and “withdrawn “.
• Why was his police custody lifted?
The day after the attack, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that “the racist motive of the facts” had been “added” to the investigation opened for assassinations, attempted assassinations, violence with a weapon, and violations of the legislation on weapons. The man, arrested on Friday, was immediately taken into custody.
But this police custody was lifted on Saturday, since “the doctor who examined the defendant this day at the end of the afternoon declared that the state of health of the person concerned was not compatible with the measure of police custody”, communicated the Paris prosecutor’s office at the end of the day.
“The respondent was taken to the psychiatric infirmary of the police headquarters. The police custody measure was therefore lifted pending his presentation before an investigating judge when his state of health allows it” , added the prosecution.
The latter must again communicate on the procedure on Sunday.
• Why has the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office not been contacted?
Saturday evening, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) did not take up the case. Some personalities, however, described the shooting as an “attack”, like the EELV deputy Julien Bayou, or a “terrorist act”, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
For his part, the spokesperson for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France, Agit Polat, estimated this Saturday that there was “no doubt” that his association “is being targeted in this way of a terrorist and political character”. The shooting took place in front of the association’s headquarters.
Acts of terrorism means, in the Penal Code“offenses committed intentionally, in relation to an individual or collective enterprise, with the aim of seriously disturbing public order through intimidation or terror”, explains the DGSI on his site. The PNAT can therefore seize the facts if it considers that the investigation highlights these characteristics.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said he wanted to “recall the difference between a racist crime, which is by nature heinous, and a terrorist act”, during a speech to the press on Saturday.
“The difference is whether or not you adhere to a claimed political ideology,” he added. This is what the investigation must determine.