Tension As Muslim Worshipper’s Kill In Mosque
Thhere was serious attention as Aboubakar Cissé, a 22-year-old Malian man who worked as a carpenter and volunteered at the La Grand-Combe mosque near the town of Alès in Southern France, was stabbed multiple times while praying alone in the mosque last Friday morning.
The main suspect, identified as a 21-year-old French national Olivier A, reportedly filmed the attack and posted it on social media. He could be heard insulting Allah and congratulating himself, saying “I did it”.
After fleeing to Italy, the suspect gave himself in to police near Florence on Sunday night.
Abdelkrim Grini, the state prosecutor in Alès, said while an “anti-Muslim or Islamophobic motive” was the main focus of the investigation, they were also exploring other possible motives, including “a fascination with death, a desire to kill and a desire to be considered a serial killer”.
The National Assembly observed a minute’s silence on Tuesday in Cissé’s memory.
Initially refused by the assembly’s president Yael Braun-Pivet based on a new rule excluding the rite for individual cases, she reversed the decision under pressure from MPs, particularly on the left.
Critics claim the government has been slow to react.
President Emmanuel Macron waited until Sunday to comment on the attack.
When a student was stabbed to death at a high school in Nantes the day before Cissé’s murder, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau visited the scene hours after the attack. However, he did not immediately visit the mosque, travelling first of all to a nearby town on Sunday to meet with local officials.
While Retailleau expressed support for the victim’s family and the Muslim community in a social media post last Friday, he’s been criticised for failing to meet the victim’s family.
Yoro Cissé, the victim’s cousin, told AFP on Tuesday that no member of the government had contacted his family.
Djibril Cissé said the family was “concerned” by both the media treatment of the case and by the “tardy response of some political leaders”.
Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Muslim council, expressed concern that “anti-Muslim hatred is not taken as seriously as other hate” and questioned why an anti-terrorism inquiry had not been opened.
More than 1,000 people gathered on Sunday for a silent march in La Grand-Combe in homage to Cissé, while several hundreds also demonstrated in Paris against Islamophobia.
The French government has since ordered security to be increased at mosques nationwide. (RFI)
