On April 25th a young Muslim worshipper, Aboubakar Cissé, was stabbed to death in a mosque in the town of La Grand-Combe in the south of France. The suspect in the case was arrested after fleeing to Italy. Since the murder, the French government – criticised for its slow initial reaction to the killing - has struggled to offer any political response beyond formulaic references to “universalism” and Republican values. As Ilyes Ramdani reports, this is down to the failure by Emmanuel Macron and his allies over his two terms of office to grapple with the issues of racism and discrimination.
Attackers in April struck at several jails and other facilities across France, torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
Prime minister François Bayrou may not have known everything about the abuses being committed at the private Catholic school at Bétharram in south-west France, but he knew enough while occupying various political posts over the years to at least have tried to take action. Yet he did nothing. On May 14th he is due to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the unfolding scandal at the independent school. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi wonders whether the head of the French government will continue to double down on his disastrous strategy of lying over the issue.
A political row continues in France over whether certain small businesses – especially bakeries and florists – should be allowed to open on France's only public holiday on which paid rest is mandatory for non-essential businesses.
The latest data from the Ministry of the Interior and France's anti-corruption agency show there has been a sharp rise in the number of offences involving dishonesty or breaches of probity, across all categories of such crime. This leap has been driven in particular by the number of cases of corruption, which has almost doubled over that period. Yet despite these startling figures and recent high-profile corruption cases involving prominent figures, France's political leaders continue to ignore the issue, as Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.
Last Friday a Muslim worshipper was stabbed to death at a mosque in the small southern French town of La Grand-Combe. The suspect then fled but has since been arrested in Italy. The brutal killing of the young victim, Aboubakar Cissé, has caused deep grief, anger and political controversy. The government has been accused of being slow to react to the killing while a section of the French Left has attacked the mood of “Islamophobia” in France. In the wake of this stabbing Mediapart spoke to Abdallah Zekri, the rector of the Sud-Nîmes mosque in southern France and vice-president of the Muslim representative body the Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM). He criticised the way Muslims in France are stigmatised and said he, too, was shocked by the slow response of the authorities after the young man's murder. He spoke to Mediapart's Yann Philippin.
When Paris receives a request from a foreign country for the return of human remains held in France's public museum collections, such demands can be granted under recent legislation. But the French state argues that there is a legal vacuum when such claims instead come from French overseas territories such as French Guiana on the South American mainland and Réunion in the Indian Ocean, both of which are governed from Paris. Julien Sartre reports on attempts to change the law to allow remains held by metropolitan museums to be returned to these distant French territories.
Current president says he is against move despite the definitive conviction of the right-wing former president last year on charges of influence-peddling and corruption.
The suspect, identified as a French citizen of Bosnian origin, remains on the run; the authorities are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.
The saga of the sexual abuse scandal at the Notre Dame de Bétharram private Catholic school in south-west France, and just what the current French prime minister François Bayrou knew about it at the time, has taken another twist. Speaking during a Mediapart broadcast, Bayrou's daughter Hélène Perlant, who was a pupil at the school, confirmed that her father had indeed gone to the home of Judge Christian Mirande back in 1998 to speak about an ongoing criminal investigation into rape allegations against the school's former headteacher. François Bayrou had hitherto denied doing so. But following his daughter's comments the prime minister's office formally acknowledged that a meeting did indeed take place at the time. An opposition Member of Parliament has now called on the prime minister to resign for “lying several times” over the case. Mathieu Magnaudeix, David Perrotin and Antton Rouget report.
