William M., suspected of having murdered three Kurds on Friday in Paris, was indicted on Monday, December 26, to ” murder and attempted murder because of race, ethnicity, nation or religion” also for “unauthorized acquisition and possession of weapons”according to information communicated by a judicial source to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Retired from the SNCF, 69 years old and of French nationality, he was placed in pre-trial detention.
The racist motive of the facts had been confirmed during his police custody: William M. had told the investigators that he felt a “hatred of foreigners has become completely pathological” since the burglary of his home in 2016, reported the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau. He described himself as ” depressive “ and “suicidal” and, according to Mme Becuau, added: “but before committing suicide, I always wanted to murder migrants, foreigners” since that robbery.
Early Friday morning, he went armed to Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) “to commit murders on foreign persons”, continued the prosecutor. But, for lack of people in particular, he gave up his project. After returning to his parents’ Parisian home, where he lived, he walked to rue d’Enghien (10e district) to the Kurdish Cultural Center Ahmet-Kaya, whose location he knew.
“All migrants” targeted
The 60-year-old then opened fire with a handgun, killing two men, Mir Perwer, a Kurdish political refugee singer, and Abdurrahman Kizil, as well as the head of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in France, Emine Kara. Three other men were injured. Five of the six victims are of Turkish nationality, the last of French nationality.
On Monday, the case also took a diplomatic turn. The French ambassador to Turkey has been summoned by the Turkish government. Ankara is protesting against what it perceives as a “anti-Turkey propaganda” in France, according to a Turkish diplomatic source. “We expressed our dissatisfaction with the propaganda launched by the circles of the PKK [Parti des travailleurs du Kurdistan] against our country, the French government and certain politicians being used as instruments of propaganda”criticized this source to AFP.
Since the death of the three Kurds near the Kurdish Cultural Center Ahmet-Kaya, headquarters of the Kurdish Democratic Center of France (CDKF), considered an offshoot of the PKK in Paris, Turkey and its secret services have been directly accused by the Kurdish community in France to have fomented the attack.
White March in Paris
Earlier in the day, several hundred people gathered again at midday rue d’Enghien for a march in tribute to the three victims. Small altars were erected on the sidewalk where these were taken down, accompanied by photographs, candles and bouquets of flowers.
The procession set off in the direction of rue Lafayette, in the same district of the capital, where three militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed on January 9, 2013 in Paris. The alleged assassin of the three PKK militants, Omer Güney, died of a brain tumor in 2016, weeks before his trial, and before the French investigation could shed light on his relations with the Turkish intelligence services , known by the acronym of MIT. In 2019, the civil parties obtained the relaunch of the investigation to examine their possible involvement. In Paris on Monday, protesters chanted in Kurdish “Our martyrs do not die” and in French “Women, life, freedom”and demanded ” [la] truth and [la] justice “.