The man suspected of shooting dead three Kurds in Paris ahead of Christmas weekend told investigators that he had set out that morning aiming to kill migrants or foreigners and then himself, according to prosecutors.

The man, 69, killed three people outside a Kurdish cultural centre on Friday and wounded three others, and was then disarmed and subdued by one of the injured victims, the Paris prosecutor’s office said onSunday.

He was detained at the scene and transferred on Saturday to psychiatric care. His name has not been released.

If he is released from psychiatric care, he could face charges of racially motivated murder, attempted murder and arms violations.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the man told investigators that a 2016 burglary at his home marked a turning point for him, sparking what he called a “hatred toward foreigners that became completely pathological”.

The shooting in a bustling Parisian neighbourhood shook and angered the Kurdish community, and stirred up concerns about hate crimes at a time when far-right voices have gained prominence in France and around Europe.

The man told investigators that on the morning of the shooting he took his weapon first to the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis with the aim of killing foreigners but changed his mind, the prosecutor’s statement said.

He then went to the Kurdish centre in Paris, which is near his parents’ home.

He opened fire on one woman and two men there, then entered a Kurdish-run hair salon across the street and fired on three men.

One of the wounded men in the hair salon managed to stop him and hold him until police arrived, the prosecutor’s statement said.

He told investigators he did not know his victims, and described all “non European foreigners” as his enemies, the statement said.

Two of the injured were still in hospital on Sunday with leg injuries.

Investigators are studying his computer and phone, but have not found any confirmed links to extremist ideology, the statement said.

On Saturday, members of France’s Kurdish community and anti-racism activists joined together in a demonstration of mourning and anger. The gathering was largely peaceful, with marchers holding portraits of the victims.

Some youths threw objects and set cars and rubbish bins on fire, and police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.

A spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France said the violence began after some people drove by waving a Turkish flag. Some of the marchers carried flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

In 2013, three women Kurdish activists were found shot dead at a Kurdish centre in Paris.

Turkey’s army has long been fighting Kurdish militants affiliated with the banned PKK in south-east Turkey as well as in northern Iraq. Turkey’s military also recently launched a series of strikes from the air and with artillery against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.

Turkey, the US and the European Union consider the PKK a terror group, but Turkey accuses some European countries of leniency toward alleged PKK members.

That frustration has been the main reason behind Turkey’s continued delay of Sweden and Finland’s Nato membership.

Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar said on Sunday the violence in Paris was a result of lenience toward the PKK.

“The snake France fed is now biting them. Everyone should now see the real face of this terror organisation,” Akar said.

A Belgian court sentenced Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam and a co-accused to 20 years in prison on Monday for trying to kill police during a shootout in Brussels in 2016.

Judge Marie-France Keutgen told the courtroom that 28-year-old Abdeslam and Tunisian Sofien Ayari, 24, had been found guilty of “attempted terrorist murder” during the shootout in March 2016.

Abdeslam is in a French prison awaiting trial for his role in the Islamic State attacks in Paris in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed. Prosecutors say he is the lone survivor of a suicide squad.

Neither he nor Ayari, who is in custody in Belgium, was present for the judgement.

Despite the absence of both accused, security was tight around the Brussels court, with heavily armed police on guard.

By the time of the shootout in the Brussels district of Forest on March 15, 2016, Abdeslam had been in hiding for four months after fleeing Paris the night his elder brother blew himself up at a cafe.

Prosecutors who accuse Abdeslam of helping organise the attacks and ferry former fighters from Syria around Europe say he, too, would have died if his suicide vest had not failed to detonate. His lawyers do not dispute Abdeslam was in Paris during the attacks.

They finally stumbled across him when, with French officers, they went to inspect a suspect apartment in Forest and then came under a hail of gunfire which wounded four of them.

After a three-hour siege ended with marksmen killing a 35-year-old Algerian called Mohamed Belkaid, police found an arms cache.

Abdeslam’s DNA found at the scene linked him to the shootout and that led to his arrest three days later in a different apartment in Brussels.

Four days after his arrest, suicide bombers attacked Brussels Airport and the city’s metro, killing 32 people. Officials believe Abdeslam had links with the bombers and that they brought forward their attack because they feared Abdeslam might reveal their plans under interrogation.

Abdeslam was present on the opening day of the trial, but refused to answer the judge’s questions.

His lawyer Sven Mary told reporters on Monday that he discuss the case with his client before determining whether to appeal.

]]> 7277 https://www.faith-matters.org/anti-terrorism-police-hold-five-over-wired-explosives-found-in-posh-paris-neighbourhood/ Tue, 03 Oct 2017 14:34:41 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=6913

French counter-terrorism investigators questioned five people on Tuesday after police over the weekend found what appeared to be a ready-to-detonate bomb at an apartment building in one of Paris’s poshest neighbourhoods.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said one of those arrested was on an intelligence services list of “radicalised” persons – a list that includes the names of potential Islamist militants.

“We are still in a state of war,” Collomb, speaking after a Sunday attack in which a knifeman killed two women in Marseille, told France Inter radio.

Judicial sources said the explosive device included two gas canisters inside the building in the affluent 16th district of western Paris and two outside, some of them doused with petrol and wired to connect to a mobile phone.

It was unclear why the device was planted at the location where it was found as there was no obvious target living there, the judicial sources said.

More than 230 people have been killed in France in attacks by Islamist militants over the past three years. The Islamic State militant group, whose bases in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by French war planes, has urged followers to attack France.

Most of those killed died in attacks by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris in 2015 and when a man drove a large truck into crowds in the Riviera resort of Nice in 2016.

Since then, there has been a string of attacks perpetrated by lone assailants, often targeting police or soldiers.

“The threat is changing form,” said Collomb.

A counter-terrorism investigation is also under way after the attack on Sunday, where a knifeman slit the throat of one of his victims and killed her cousin before being shot dead by soldiers at a train station in the southern port city.

A separate inquiry has been opened to establish why the man, who had been briefly detained by police the day before in the city of Lyon had been released.

France declared a state of emergency in late 2015 after the Paris attack by gunmen and suicide bombers, giving police special search and arrest powers to combat would-be terrorists.

New legislation was due to be put to a vote in parliament on Tuesday to make many of those emergency measures permanent.

by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Today marks the first anniversary of the multiple attacks by Isil in Paris in which 130 people were murdered, 89 of them at the Bataclan theatre.

The beautiful building opened in 1865 and became famous as a home for music and entertainment. From the 1970s it became an important venue for rock, comedy and café-theatre. Those who attended the concert on Friday 13 November last year went to celebrate life.

I remember looking at the pictures printed in affectionate memory to honour the lives of those who were murdered there that night. They were mostly young, and happy. For those of us in our forties and fifties, they could have been our children on a night out. They had gone to enjoy life, when slaughter stole it from them.

When the three gunmen began to fire, people were mown down ‘like a gust of wind through wheat’. Many were shot as they tried to flee; others pretended to be dead. With supreme cynicism, the gunmen went round kicking bodies; if any moved, they were killed instantly.

On the eve of the anniversary the theatre has re-opened with a concert by Sting to ‘remember and honour those who lost their lives in the attack and to celebrate the life and the music that this historic theatre represents”. The opening song Fragile contains the words: ‘Nothing comes from violence and nothing will’.

Among those who attended were courageous survivors of last year’s atrocity, some in tribute to loved ones they had lost. Kelly Le Guen, who survived by barricading herself inside a room with twenty-five others said that she couldn’t wait ‘to see life and joy fill the room and not just carnage. Music and culture must re-stake their claim.”

The message on this anniversary must be that terror will never defeat the tenacity and bravery of the human spirit or destroy the profound love which binds human hearts together. It will not transform innocence and goodness into its own likeness.

Antoine Leiris lost his wife on that appalling night. Days later he posted on facebook a remarkable letter to her killers and those who supported them:

On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate.

His words are a profound and inspiring expression of devotion and defiance. He subsequently published a book with the same title: You will not have my hate. Among the responses he subsequently received was one which read simply: ‘I want to respond to blind hate with blind love.’ It is reminiscent of the Talmudic idea that the only way to defeat causeless hatred is through love beyond all cause.

Both the Quran and the second-century rabbinic text the Mishnah contain the teaching that ‘One who saves a single life is as if they had saved an entire world’, while, conversely, ‘one who destroys a single life is as if they had destroyed an entire world’.

Every life is sacred, the unique embodiment of God’s spirit. Every life is a distinctive unfolding of the divine and has a distinctive capacity for creativity and compassion. No life is simply replaceable. Therefore murder is always sacrilege, never sanctification.

We have a choice: to be healers, or haters. Terror teaches us to work together, across all faiths and nationalities, not only to be vigilant but, more deeply, to help each other to be healers through compassion, understanding and love beyond all cause.

Save

Three women arrested in connection with a car loaded with gas cylinders found in a side road near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning an attack on a Paris railway station, the French interior ministry said.

“An alert has been issued to all stations but they had planned to attack the Gare de Lyon on Thursday,” a ministry official said on Friday after the arrests overnight.

The Gare de Lyon station is in the southeast of the capital, less than 3 kilometres from the cathedral which marks the centre.

The official also said the youngest of the three women, a 19 year-old whose father was the owner of the car and who was already suspected by police of wanting to go and fight for Islamic State in Syria, had written a letter pledging allegiance to the militant Islamist group.

The discovery on Saturday night of the Peugeot 607 laden with seven gas cylinders, six of them full, triggered a terrorism investigation and revived fears about further attacks in a country where Islamist militants have killed more than 230 people since January, 2015.

Scores of religiously radicalised people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State. Many of those involved in recent attacks in France have either taken part in the fighting or had plans to.

France is among the countries bombing Islamic State strongholds, and the group has urged supporters to launch more attacks on French soil.

One of the women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late on Thursday. Other officials said it was the teenager who attacked the officer.

TV footage showed a policeman leaving the scene of the arrests on the outskirts of Paris carrying a large knife.

Police sources said no detonator had been found in the car, though the vehicle also contained three jerry cans of diesel fuel.

When it was found in the early hours of Sunday morning the car had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.

“These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act,” Cazeneuve said in a televised statement. They bring to seven the number of people detained since Tuesday.

The arrests took place in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km (20 miles) south-east of Paris.

The car’s owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

A car, whose owner is on an intelligence services watchlist of people suspected of religious radicalisation, was discovered near Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris on Saturday night with seven gas cylinders inside, police and judicial officials said on Wednesday.

The car owner was taken into custody but later released, one judicial official said. A couple, aged 34 and 29, were arrested at a motorway lay-by on Tuesday in southern France in connection with the incident and remained in custody, the official said.

The Peugeot 607, which had no registration plates, contained seven gas cylinders, one of them empty on the front passenger seat, two police officials said.

It was found with its hazard lights flashing, as if to attract attention, they said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he was waiting for a report from investigators on what the possible motives were for the incident.

There was no detonating device present in the car, found on a Seine riverside stretch called the Quai de Montebello, metres from the Notre-Dame cathedral, one of Paris’s many popular tourist attractions.

Documents with writing in Arabic were also found in the car.

More than 200 people have been killed in terror attacks over the past year-and-a-half in France.

France remains on maximum alert after calls by the Islamic State group for followers to attack the country, which is bombing the militant group’s bases in Iraq and Syria.

Florence Berthout, mayor of Paris’s Fifth Arrondissement (District), said the incident highlighted the need to beef up security and put more police on patrol in one of the world’s most visited cities.

She said the vehicle was left in a zone where parking is strictly prohibited and that it had remained there for around two hours before it came to the attention of police.

“Police and army staffing must be stepped up,” she told news TV channel BFM.

Thousands of extra police and soldiers have been deployed to patrol sensitive sites across France since 130 people were killed by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in multiple attacks on Paris last Nov 13.

A state of emergency declared at that time is still in place and gives police extra search and arrest powers but debate still rages over security levels, following a further attack on July 14 in which a man mowed into crowds in the city of Nice, killing 86.

A relative of one of the militants who attacked French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015 has been put under formal investigation for Islamist ties and remanded in custody, a judicial source said on Saturday.

The source said Mourad Hamyd was suspected of trying to travel to Syria to join Islamic State.

Hamyd, who is French and a brother-in-law of assailant Cherif Kouachi, was detained in Bulgaria last month after a Paris court issued a European arrest warrant against him.

Hamyd was questioned by French police following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in which Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said shot dead 12 people before being killed by police, but was cleared of any involvement.

When Moroccan-born former boxer Mohamed Idrissi orders a young man out of his gym for smoking, the respect is tangible.

The youngster stubs out his cigarette and leaves, head bowed. Inside the gym, the muted thud of leather gloves striking punchbags resumes.

Idrissi’s influence goes beyond his job as a coach at the Brussels Boxing Academy, near the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital where Islamist militants, several of them of Moroccan origin, planned last year’s deadly Paris attacks.

He also has an informal role mentoring youths facing what Reuters interviews with local officials, social workers and residents of Molenbeek suggest is a growing feeling of alienation and increasingly tense relations with police.

Building trust in communities such as Molenbeek is seen by police as vital for gathering intelligence and countering the threat of Islamic State, and respected local figures like Idrissi have a part to play.

“Boxing is a philosophy which I tell them to apply in life,” Idrissi said of his young boxers at the gym in a primary school in central Brussels, across an industrial-era canal from the halal shops, tea parlours and mosques of Molenbeek.

“I tell them: ‘You have to fight to be Belgian’,” said the 34-year-old, who deserted from the Moroccan military police a decade ago while taking part in a boxing competition.

Since the Nov. 13 bloodshed in Paris, security has been tightened in Molenbeek, a district described by its own mayor as a “breeding ground” for violence, and many Muslims say they feel stigmatised.

Idrissi is angered by frequent police checks of people with Moroccan roots which he sees as racial profiling although police deny this. But he bites his tongue in the presence of young men to avoid repeating “the kind of comments we warn parents can feed into their radicalisation.”

Some parents, he says, have turned to him to talk their sons out of plans to join Islamist militants in Syria. Police also visited the gym this year as part of a programme to improve their image with youngsters.

At least five men who trained there have travelled to Syria. One, Ayoub Bazarouj, was detained in December on suspicion of having links to the Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed. He was released in January without charge.

Another, Ahmed Dahmani, was arrested in Turkey last year on suspicion of scouting out sites for the militant strikes. Police released a photograph of Dahmani at the gym, holding his fists up as if ready to throw a punch at the camera. Belgium asked for his extradition from Turkey earlier this year.

Idrissi declined comment when asked about his interaction with police over some of his young charges going to Syria.

“LATENT ISLAMOPHOBIA”

A failure to stop the militant cell behind the Paris attacks from carrying out more bombings — 32 people were killed in bombings on the Brussels metro and at the city’s international airport on March 22 — has highlighted the police lack of knowledge of Molenbeek and their few ties with its residents.

The police are also hard pressed to overcome the fear of IS that discourages possible informants. One resident, Hawa Keita, has received death threats since informing on the network that enticed her son to Syria and says: “We live in fear.”

Having eyes on the ground is vital for plugging the intelligence gaps, many officers say.

“It’s not enough to bug phones: you need to know what you are listening for,” Andre Jacob, a former head of Belgium’s State Security agency, the Surete de l’Etat.

As in similar communities across Europe, Belgian police are struggling to build bridges with young Muslims at the same time as they hunt for militants. They have carried out dozens of raids and arrests in Belgium in recent months.

The Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities (UNIA), an advocacy group which also works with police on rights issues, says the number of calls to its hot lines complaining about alleged abuse by police has jumped since the Paris attacks.

Its director, Patrick Charlier, witnessed what he called latent Islamophobia in workshops his organisation conducted with police before the Paris attacks. Such sentiment, he suggests, is now out in the open.

“We all of a sudden had a number of cases (of complaints against police),” Charlier said, but declined to give figures, saying it was too soon to assess.

Residents in Molenbeek are angered by some of the comments made about the Muslim population in Belgium, including the interior minister’s suggestion that many Muslims danced in celebration after the Brussels bombings.

“Being rejected, relegated to trash schools, it’s not surprising it ends in bombs,” said 48-year-old Milodi Rahma. “We are doubly victimised: victims of IS and of Islamophobia.”

“US AND THEM”

Belgium has announced a 39-million-euro ($44 million) plan to improve police coordination in Brussels, including boosting staff in Molenbeek for the first time in two decades. The district now has an eight-person unit, whose task is to prevent radicalisation.

But tight budgets means police can end up wearing two hats.

“One day they’re taking part in a big violent raid and the next they’re supposed to go out and chat,” said Vincent Gilles, who heads the Belgian police union. “A community policeman needs to be seen … as a partner, not an enemy.”

The suspicion cuts both ways in Molenbeek, where the IS cell spent months planning the Paris carnage and where one suspect, Salah Abdeslam, hid with what many officers believe was the blessing of the community.

“You can’t tell me no one knew where he was,” said Kris Vanstraeten, a police inspector in the area.

When police did find him, some youths hurled glass bottles and insults at them.

Molenbeek mayor Françoise Schepmans, who made her comment about the district of 95,000 being a nest of violence two days after the Paris attacks, says the police have a difficult role and relations are as good as they can be.

“It’s there to handle security, not to babysit,” she said.

But she says too few police know the areas where they operate. Of 50 federal officers sent to work in Molenbeek after the March bombings, none was even from the capital.”Sometimes we have young policemen who arrive and say ‘Uh-oh, where am I?’,” said local police spokesman Johan Berckmans.

Acknowledging that breaking down barriers was difficult, he said: “It’s always a question of ‘us and them’.”

Lassana Bathily saved many lives on that fateful day on January the 9th 2015. Unbeknown to him as he carried out his shop duties in the Paris Kosher supermarket, the establishment was about to be targeted by a young man who believed that his ‘Jihad’ was to target Jews as they shopped for Shabbath.

Amedy Coulibaly targeted the Paris Kosher supermarket for one reason and one reason alone. He wanted to kill Jews on behalf of the toxic narrative of Daesh or the so-called Islamic State. He was also friends with the two Charlie Hebdo killers and brothers, Said and Cherife Kouachi. The Kouachi brothers had wrought havoc to the streets of Paris through their murderous campaign which targeted satirists within Charlie Hebdo. They had also murdered Paris policeman, Ahmed Merabet.

The Paris Kosher supermarket was targeted after the Charlie Hebdo murders in the heart of Paris that so shocked the nation and which lead to a lockdown in the City. However, on the 9th of January, Amedy Coulibaly, who claimed that he was working on behalf of the so-called Islamic State or Daesh, entered the supermarket. Coulibaly rounded up some of the shoppers and ordered a cashier to bring up others onto the next floor where he had taken the hostages to. Some of those downstairs agreed to go up whilst Bathily advised others to use the goods elevator to escape.

However, the shoppers below did not want to risk an escape as they heard Coulibaly firing his weapon at those shoppers that he had rounded up. At this point, Bathily guided some of the shoppers into a refrigeration room and closed the lights so as to make it look as if there was no-one in there.

The Escape

Having made his escape through the elevator and a nearby fire escape, police held Bathily for over an hour, thinking that he was one of the terrorists. He was finally released and helped police map out the internal design of the Paris Kosher supermarket. This information was vital in saving lives and led to the end of the siege with Coulibaly being shot dead.

Four people died in the supermarket attack and Bathily also lost a close friend in the terrorist attack. Yohan Cohen died on that fateful day as he tried to save the lives of others and wrestled with the gunman, Amedi Coulibaly. He was murdered in cold blood for his efforts.

Bizarely, Coulibaly was Malian by heritage and Bathily is also of Malian heritage. Two people from the same country, one who sought to take lives because they were Jewish and the other trying to save lives because they were his friends and colleagues. One individual acted in the name of the Islamic State, whilst the other, (Bathily), says that his belief in Islam means that every life is precious. He desperately tried to save lives in the melee of the terrorist attack.

Visit to the UK Facilitated by Faith Matters in Partnership with the Jewish News

Lassana Bathily will be coming to the UK from May 27th to the 1st of June 2016. His visit is being organised and co-ordinated by Faith Matters in partnership with the Jewish News and if you are interested in arranging an event, or a dinner or a working lunch, do get in touch with the Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal OBE.

Let us honour this hero and make clear that the actions of murderers and terrorists will not shake our belief that collectively, we can and should protect our freedoms. Only by acting collectively can we stop those groups like IS from trying to drive a wedge between communities. Finally, and more importantly, let us honour those lives lost in the Paris Kosher supermarket on that fateful day. Their memory lives on.

You can e-mail Faith Matters on info@faith-matters.co.uk. Correspondence should be marked for Jane Smith.

Faith Matters was founded in 2006 by Fiyaz Mughal OBE on the basis of working with faith communities and to support better understanding, friendships and working relationships between both faith groups. It has undertaken interfaith, conflict resolution and historical projects in order to facilitate and nurture stronger relations between faith communities such as Jewish and Muslim communities. 

Belgium’s federal prosecutor said a man held since November in connection with the Nov. 13 Paris attacks would be released on Friday under strict conditions.

Abdellah C, a 35-year-old Belgian national, accompanied one of the Paris attacks suspects, Mohamed Abrini, to the airport when the latter left to fight in Syria, state broadcaster RTBF reported.

His lawyer told Reuters he denied any involvement.

 (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Barbara Lewis) – Reuters News