After a knife attack by young people at a village festival left one dead and several injured, a debate erupted in France over the circumstances of the violence. President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne condemned the attack in the town of Crepol that killed a 16-year-old at the weekend. Borne also appealed to the decency of politics: the “Crepol drama” should not tempt people to play with fears.
Nine people involved in the crime have already been arrested, including, according to the Public Ministry, the 20-year-old man suspected of being responsible for the fatal stabbing. He has French citizenship, said authorities, who typically say nothing about suspects’ citizenship or immigration background.
The right field is creating a climate
Given that the crime was particularly brutal, there is a lot of attention on the incident in France, and the far-right camp is now raising eyebrows with speculation about the origins of the perpetrators. “We are witnessing an organized attack in a criminal suburb, where there are armed militias carrying out raids,” Marine Le Pen of Rassemblement National told Valeurs Actuelles magazine. Immigration is to blame.
Eric Zemmour, from the ultra-right Reconquete party, said after the incident that there was a “true jihad” in France and that the country was killing itself. The Crepol tragedy was politically exploited before anything was known about it, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported. To this day, we still don’t know the dynamics that led to the stabbing.
Conflict on the sidelines of the celebration
The altercation occurred on the sidelines of a celebration in a community hall in Crepol, near Grenoble. As the media reported referring to the Public Ministry, initially there was a fight between one of the security guards and a group of people without tickets. People in the hall ran to help and the argument escalated.
According to media reports, only two young people from a settlement in a neighboring town were prevented from participating in the celebration and returned with support. Participants in the celebration told the newspaper “Le Dauphine Libere” that they had the impression that the group had come “to kill” – and that they had knives with a blade length of 20 to 25 centimeters.