The fatal stabbing of a Muslim worshiper in a mosque in southern France has sparked controversy over the handling of Islamophobic crimes, with Muslim leaders and the victim's family criticising what they consider to be a delayed and inadequate government response. MPs held a minute's silence for the young victim on Tuesday, but only after political pressure reversed an initial refusal.
Aboubakar Cissé, a 22-year-old Malian man who worked as a carpenter and volunteered at the La Grand-Combe mosque near the town of Alès, was stabbed multiple times while praying alone in the mosque last Friday morning.
The main suspect, identified as a 21-year-old French national Olivier A, reportedly filmed the attack and posted it on social media. He could be heard insulting Allah and congratulating himself, saying "I did it".
After fleeing to Italy, the suspect gave himself in to police near Florence on Sunday night.
Abdelkrim Grini, the state prosecutor in Alès, said that while an "anti-Muslim or Islamophobic motive" was the main focus of the investigation, they were also exploring other possible motives, including "a fascination with death, a desire to kill and a desire to be considered a serial killer".
The suspect's lawyer claims his client denied hatred of Islam was behind the attack, saying he'd "killed the first person he saw" and that he has "said nothing against Islam, nor mosques".
Cissé's family was received at the National Assembly on Tuesday. "Justice must be done for our nephew," said the victim's uncle Djibril Cissé. "We are both saddened and angry... he didn't come here to get killed, he was a good man, sociable, and a model for us all."
Minute's silence
The National Assembly observed a minute's silence on Tuesday in Cissé's memory.
Initially refused by the assembly's president Yael Braun-Pivet based on a new rule excluding the rite for individual cases, she reversed the decision under pressure from MPs, particularly on the left.
"The Republic is one and indivisible," said Marine Tondelier, head of the Greens. "People who are killed for their religion, whether Muslim, Catholic or another faith, must receive the same respect from Republican instututions and all politicians."
Critics claim the government has been slow to react.
President Emmanuel Macron waited until Sunday to comment on the attack, writing on social media: "I extend the support of the nation to his family and to our fellow citizens of the Muslim faith. Racism and hatred based on religion will never have a place in France. Freedom of worship is inviolable."
When a student was stabbed to death at a high school in Nantes the day before Cissé's murder, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau visited the scene hours after the attack. However, he did not immediately visit the mosque, travelling first of all to a nearby town on Sunday to meet with local officials.
While Retailleau expressed support for the victim's family and the Muslim community in a social media post last Friday, he's been criticised for failing to meet the victim's family.
Yoro Cissé, the victim's cousin, told AFP on Tuesday that no member of the government had contacted his family. "We want to feel safe; we love France. We want to feel like everybody else," he said.
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'Anti-Muslim hatred not taken so seriously'
French media initially reported, wrongly, that the killing had stemmed from a dispute between two Muslim worshippers.
Djibril Cissé said the family was "concerned" by both the media treatment of the case and by the "tardy response of some political leaders".
Aminata Konaté-Boune, a spokesperson for Cissé's Soninke ethnic group, went further.
"It's an Islamophobic crime, it's an act of terrorism, and today we are afraid," she told reporters on Tuesday. "Tomorrow, what will happen? Will they come knocking on our doors to kill us? Will there be a hunt for Muslims?"
Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Muslim council, expressed concern that "anti-Muslim hatred is not taken as seriously as other hate" and questioned why an anti-terrorism inquiry had not been opened.
More than 1,000 people gathered on Sunday for a silent march in La Grand-Combe in homage to Cissé, while several hundred also demonstrated in Paris against Islamophobia.
The French government has since ordered security to be increased at mosques nationwide.
