A man of 84 years struck Monday at 15.20 with bullet shots to two people before the mosque of Bayonne, in the French Basque Country. The victims had been surprised at the aggressor, trying to set fire to the door of the temple, according to a press release of the Prefecture of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. To escape, set fire to a vehicle. The police stopped him a few minutes later at his home in the department neighbor of the Landes. One of the wounded, 74 and 78 years old, is hospitalized.
Communique of the préfecture des Pyrénées-Atlantiques suite à l arrestation rapide de l’auteur des coups de feu à l’entrée de la mosquée de Bayonne. pic.twitter.com/AugO8qnR8d
— Préfet des Pyrénées-Atlantiques (@Prefet64) October 28, 2019
The chain BFMTV ensures that the aggressor was a candidate of the party of the extreme right National Front in the departmental elections of 2015. According to the radio station France Bleu, this is a an ex military man who resided in the municipality of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx, about 15 kilometers from the place of the facts. In the vehicle in which he fled had a gun Smith & Wesson, a weapon they tried to use before that the police desarmase, according to the above-mentioned station. Also kept a bottle of gas.
To address the root causes of any attempt to hold his party, the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN, match-the heir of the National Front), Marine Le Pen, was one of the first political leaders to react. And he did it condemned the attack with firmness. “The bomb attack against the mosque of Bayonne is an act unclassifiable absolutely contrary to all the values that it defends our movement. These crimes should be treated with the severity the more total,” she wrote on the social network Twitter.
The attack happens in one of these moments are cyclical in France discussed about the role of islam in society. The attack of October 3, in the Prefecture of Paris, by a police officer armed with a knife, put on alert the authorities about the risk of islamist radicalization in some sectors of the society and even in the forces of law and order. In parallel, it reopened the debate about the veil that some muslim women cover the hair.
“Solidarity and support to the muslim community, whose shock and dismay I understand”, stated the minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner. “In Bayonne, the harassment against muslims has produced its effect. A madman has shot to a mosque. Enough is enough! The responsibility of each one is in a game. The words public must stop encouraging the hate!!!”, reported on Twitter by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France Insumisa, the party of the radical left. In 2018 were recorded in France a hundred acts of anti-muslim, the lowest level since 2010, according to data from the French Government.
