A 69-year-old former rail worker who was already facing trial for racist violence shot dead three people and wounded three more near a Kurdish community centre in central Paris today, reports The Times.
The man, who was released on bail 11 days ago for a 2021 sword attack on migrants, fired without warning at a group of people at the Ahmet Kaya Centre on the rue d’Enghien in the 10th arrondissement and also shot at people in a Kurdish café nearby. Police arrested him in a hairdresser’s salon. He suffered injuries to the face and was taken to hospital. One of the injured was in critical condition.
The shooting, which caused panic in the ethnically mixed area near the Gare de l’Est station, appeared to be targeted at Kurds, many of whom live in the district. The man, who was talking incoherently when arrested, told police he hated Kurds, according to Le Parisien news site.
Laure Beccuau, the Paris chief prosecutor, said the man, who is French born and white, had been released this month pending trial for racist violence in an attack with a sabre on a migrant camp in the Bercy district of eastern Paris a year ago. He was also convicted for a 2016 racist attack in the Seine Saint Denis département, the poor area dominated by council estates on the northeastern outskirts of Paris.
Beccuau said that at this stage there was no apparent reason to treat the murders as a terrorist act.