Racist attack in Paris: a procession of the Kurdish community calls for justice and more protection

The White March of the Kurdish community in Paris ended this Monday afternoon in peace, in the X district of Paristo pay tribute to the three Kurds killed on Friday by a “racist and retired” Frenchman. William, the attacker, is in custody after being evaluated by psychiatrists.

It was his Tribute and request for justice before the murder of December 23, around noon, del Emine Kara, Kurdish fighter and guerrilla leader against ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq.

Heroine of the cause, she was known by her nom de guerre Evin Goyi, defender of Rojava, Kurdistan and wounded in Raqqa, leader of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France, according to the Kurdish Democratic Council in France (CDK-F).

The woman had applied for political asylum and was “rejected in August by the French authorities,” the spokesman told reporters on Friday.

He fell with her Mir Perwerthat he had obtained his refugee papers, e Abdulrahman Kizil under the bullets of a racist killer.

“We want our voices to be heard in peace. There is a lingering fear. If it happened once, it can always happen. We don’t necessarily feel safe,” said Orán, one of the protesters, during the protest.

“We are angry. we are in mourning. We are all sad because our compatriots have fallen. We are in a democratic country, all this should not have been related. We are waiting for French justice to hear us,” she said.

“There is anger, resentment and frustration. There is a feeling of not being safe for the Kurdish community in France. The Kurdish community expects protection from the French state and institutions, as it is the victim of violence, attacks and murders”, insisted Baran Gunduz, a volunteer of the Kurdish democratic council in France.

Racist attack?

A judicial investigation into murder and attempted murder by reasons of race, ethnicity, nationality or religion is ongoing after the Paris massacre. But the opposition led by the leader of France Insoumise, Jean Luc Melénchon, is calling for an investigation “as a terrorist attack”.

The serious incidents and clashes between Kurds and police on Saturday are based on this suspicion. They believe it was “a terrorist act, an ‘execution’, decided by the Turkish secret services, by President Receyp Erdogan.

The incidents began in full mourning, when a truck with the flag of the Gray Wolves, a Turkish far-right organization that ordered the attack on Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square, passed in front of them shouting, claiming responsibility for the massacre .

Kurds, many of them trained guerrillas of his party, the PKK, against Turkish forces, They clashed openly with the police. on the streets of Paris they burned cars and smashed shop windows.

The story of the murders of the Kurds

It’s not the first time that the front line of the PKK guerrilla, declared a terrorist organization in Turkey and Abdullah Ocallan, its leader, imprisoned and isolated, is attacked in Paris.

In the night between Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 January 2013, the bodies of Fidan Doğan (28), Sakine Cansız (54), co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Leyla Şaylemez (24), the three Kurdish women and activists, were found on the premises of the Center d’Information sur le Kurdistan, located at 147 Rue La Fayette in Paris.

To one another was shot execution style, with several bullets to the head and neck. According to the investigations by the French authorities, it is possible that the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) was involved in the murders.

The alleged killer, Ömer Güney, was a Turkish handyman 34 years old at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Video cameras at the murder site show that he was inside the building between 00:11 and 00:56, when the deaths occurred. Gunpowder was found in his bag.

Although Güney initially presented himself to the authorities as a “Kurd at heart” and a PKK sympathizer, his relatives described him as a Turkish ultranationalist, which has been referred to as a “gray wolf”. A Turkish neo-fascist organization, which takes sides against Kurdish political projects.

A few months after these murders, an audio recording between Ömer Güney and suspected MİT agents was released on the Internet. Counter-terrorism judge Jeanne Duyé was in charge of the investigation. Ömer Güney was arrested on 21 January 2013.

The prosecution alleged that Güney had frequent contact with the Turkish secret services and it was proven that he was involved in espionage.

The judge considered the participation of the Turkish secret services in the murder possible. But it did not establish who ordered the operation and whether the killer acted according to the will of the top leadership or not (in theory, this could have been an attempt to block peace talks, which were underway between Ankara and the PKK at that time). moment).

On December 13, 2016, Ömer Güney was transferred to a hospital for urgent care related to his brain tumor and died the next day, five weeks earlier the expected start of his trial.

Shortly after Güney’s death, France decided to close the investigation into the murders. In May 2019, the investigation was reopened.

Eyyup Doru, representative of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) speculated that the main target of the triple assassination may have been Fidan Doğan due to his social and political ties in France.

One of the brothers said he met French President François Hollande several times when he headed the Socialist Party and had active relations with the French authorities.

the new deaths

The new investigation opened on December 23 for “murder”, “attempted murder”, “intentional violence with weapons” and “violation of the legislation on weapons” has been entrusted to the Regional Directorate of Judicial Police (DRPJ), indicated the Prosecutor of Paris, Laure Beccuau, who went to rue Enghien after the crime.

Shortly before noon on 23 December, a man opened fire near the Kurdish cultural center Ahmet-Kaya, located at 16 rue d’Enghien, in a lively neighborhood in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, popular among Turkish and Kurdish communities. A woman and two men died.

One man is still seriously injured, two others too, but less seriously. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin specified that two of the victims were murdered in front of the Kurdish cultural center. The third was killed in a nearby Kurdish restaurant where he was trying to hide. after being chased by the alleged offender.

Slightly wounded in the face, the attacker was arrested after being grabbed by several people at a nearby hair salon.

A “case” for computers, which contained “two or three magazines 45 caliber cartridges, with at least 25 rounds inside,” was discovered near him, according to a source. The weapon used is a “1911 Colt 45” of the “tired-looking” US Army.

The rue d’Enghien cameras see him enter the hairdresser’s on that block and start shooting at those who are hiding. Then he will attack the Kurdish center and a restaurant.

But William, the aggressor, yes an obsession with migrants and foreigners. He had gone to St Denis, a typical neighborhood of migrants and Arabs, to begin his massacre but didn’t find enough people. That’s why he returned to neighborhood X, where he knew there was a Kurdish centre.

The reproaches of the murderer

William said, as he handed himself over to police, that the he was “a racist”. His reproach to the Kurds, who had fought alongside Westerners against the self-proclaimed ISIS and are considered strenuous enemies and terrorists by Turkish President Erdogan, was that, after fighting ISIS, “he had arrested the jihadists and their women and They weren’t exterminated.”

The alleged shooter, William M., 69, claimed the “racist” nature of his action as soon as he was arrested, according to police sources. He admitted in police custody a “hatred of foreigners, which had become completely pathological,” the prosecutor’s office said Sunday.

He first tried to kill foreigners in Saint-Denis. “Eventually he stopped acting, given the few people present and because his clothes prevented him from easily reloading the gun”.

While in police custody, he described himself as “depressive” and “suicidal”, stating that he “always wanted to kill migrants, foreigners” ever since a robbery at his home in 2016. “Pointing resentment” at all migrants,” explained the source at the attorney general’s office.

An “acquaintance” for the police

retired railway engineer, a French citizen, is known in court for three cases. In 2017 the court of Bobigny convicted him for the first time for possession of prohibited weapons.a six-month suspended prison sentence and a five-year gun ban

He was sentenced again on June 30, 2019 to twelve months’ imprisonment, for acts of violence with a weapon committed in 2016, conviction which has appealed.

Finally, he has been accused since December 2021 of violence with weapons, with premeditation and of a racist and degrading nature, for acts committed on December 8, 2020. He is suspected of stabbing immigrants in a camp, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris and stabbing their tents, a police source said at the time.

According to the Utopia 56 association, which has helped in the field, the man he allegedly “started tearing apart the curtains and a fight with the exiles would have followed”.

After being held in Santé prison in pre-trial detention, he was released under judicial supervision last December 12th“at the end of the maximum one-year preventive detention period provided by law” for people suspected of having committed a crime, indicates the prosecution.

His release was accompanied by a ban on contact with the victims and the possession of weapons and by the imposition of psychiatric treatment on him. On December 23, he attacked again. and liquidated the highest leaders of the Kurdish community.

Paris, correspondent

ap