French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is meeting Tuesday with the Tunisian ambassador to France following the murder of a Tunisian man by one of his neighbours at the weekend that is being investigated by anti-terrorism police as a hate crime.
The man who killed Hichem Iraoui Saturday in the Var department in southern France "posted two videos on his social networking account with racist and hateful content before and after his murder", the public prosecutor of Draguignan, Pierre Couttenier, told the AFP news agency Sunday.
The suspect, who was apprehended in his car full of weapons, was being interviewed Monday by the national anti-terrorist police, which took over the investigation and are considering a race-based motive.
The man, who is French, is suspected of shooting dead Miraoui and injuring another man, of Turkish nationality.
'Racist crime'
Retailleau said Monday that this was a “racist crime, given the evidence we currently have”, adding that “racism in France and elsewhere is a poison, and a poison that kills. Every racist act is an anti-French act”.
He was meeting the Tunisian ambassador Tuesday morning.
In a phone call with Retailleau, Tunisian Interior Minister Khaled Nouri insisted on ‘the need to ensure the protection of the Tunisian community on French territory”, according to a statement posted on the ministry's Facebook page.
He also called on the French Interior Minister to “adopt a proactive approach to prevent such crimes and ensure that they do not happen again’.
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Critics point to racist atmosphere
The anti-racism advocacy organisation SOS Racisme denounced an atmosphere in France that has legitimised racism, and resulted in hate crimes like Iraoui's death.
"These crimes are flourishing in a poisonous climate: racist rhetoric has become commonplace, the media are complacent towards the far right, and there are worrying institutional signals," the group said on X.
The lawyer representing Iraoui’s family, Mourad Battikh, said on France Info that the murder is "the result of an atmosphere that has existed in the country for several months now, even years, which is becoming a bit harsher by the day".
Many on the left regularly accuse Retailleau of racism for targeting immigrants and Muslims.
The Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure on Monday told TF1 that while Retailleau did denounce this murder as a racist crime, “he is taking part in the public debate with those on the far right who are trying to trivialise racism, to show that there is some kind of threat created by our fellow citizens of foreign origin".
Pyromaniacs putting out the fire
This weekend Retailleau used the word "barbarians" to describe those who took part in the violence on the fringes of the celebrations of PSG's Champions League victory – a word the left denounced, saying it targets foreigners.
Battikh, however, insists he is not singling out individuals.
The lawyer who also represented the family of Aboubakar Cissé, the Malian man who was stabbed to death while praying in a mosque in April , pointed to "the political context and climate that prevail in France today", which he says is like watching "pyromaniac firemen who have come to put out a fire that they themselves started".
(with newswires)
