PARIS, Dec 25 (Portal) – A suspect accused of gunning down three Kurds in Paris told investigators of his “hatred of foreigners,” the Paris prosecutor said on Sunday.
The 69-year-old man was arrested on Friday after two men and a woman were shot dead at a Kurdish cultural center and a nearby Kurdish cafe in the French capital’s busy central 10th district. Police say the man was the only shooter.
The killings stunned a community preparing to mark the 10th anniversary of the unsolved murder of three activists and sparked protests that led to clashes with police.
The suspect said during interrogation that a break-in at his home in 2016 sparked a “completely pathological hatred of foreigners,” prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
After the suspect was transferred to a psychiatric ward on Saturday, the suspect was released from hospital and his police custody resumed on Sunday afternoon, prosecutors said in a later update, adding that he would appear before an investigating judge on Monday.
The public order office had already indicated on Saturday that an alleged racist motive had been added to the first allegations of murder and weapon offenses.
During previous interrogations, the man described himself as depressed and suicidal and said he planned to kill himself with a final bullet after his attack, prosecutors said in the statement.
A search of the suspect’s parents’ home, where he lived, found no evidence of a link to extremist ideology, she said, adding that he first looked for potential victims in a suburb of the French capital but abandoned that plan .
The prosecutor had previously said the suspect was released from custody a year ago while awaiting trial in a saber attack on a migrant camp in Paris.
Kurdish officials have called for Friday’s shots to be treated as a terrorist attack.
Three other people were injured in the shooting. The prosecutor said two are still hospitalized but their lives are not in danger.
Reporting by Gus Trompiz Editing by David Goodman and Peter Graff
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