A Time for Defiance and a Time to Mourn
"We need to understand that there have been and there will be other events such as these terrible attacks.""We're at war against an ideology, Islamist ideology."French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin"This is a tragedy once again. We're a free country, we have demonstrated freedom to all countries of the world.""Today, this freedom is closing in on us. Life needs to be lived for everyone."Nice resident Frederic Lefèvre, 50, friend of Church Sextant Mr Loquès"[A Koran, two telephones and a 30cm (12-inch) knife were found on the assassin, Brahim Aouissaouhim]. "We also found a bag left by the attacker. Next to this bag were two knives that were not used in the attack." French chief anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-François Ricard
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| Church Sextant Vincent Loquès had worked at the church for more than 10 years Reuters |
Three terrorist attacks in France in one week. The latest yesterday in Nice, following hard on the murder of French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty, at a school just outside Paris who was targeted by members of the Muslim community for his use of mocking cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in his civic class, as an example of French cultural values in free speech in a secular society. The agitation that spurred the attack against Mr. Paty was incitement led by some parents of Mr. Paty's Muslim students one of whom had produced a video divulging the teacher's name and that of the school, effectively placing a fatwa on the teacher.
And now, a Tunisian man who had entered France unauthorized after he had been ordered to leave the Italian island of Lampedusa armed himself both psychologically and physically to mount an attack on French Catholics in his own bid for avenging hero status. Unlike the Chechen youth who decapitated Mr. Paty and mutilated his body, then videoed his triumph, who was shot dead by police in an encounter following the murder, the young Tunisian man who slaughtered three innocent people was wounded and arrested for murder.
The Notre Dame basilica was this man's choice to execute jihad. Bearing a Koran, he burst into the church before the first Mass of the day, resolving to kill. His relatives, shocked at the miscarriage of justice where a good, caring son and brother was arrested for an unthinkable crime, are in mourning, hoping the 'truth' will emerge and they will be re-united with the man they refuse to believe would commit such carnage. He had continually shouted "Allahu Akbar!" while he slaughtered a man and two women, and even as he confronted police before they disarmed him.
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| Brahim Aouissaoui's mother, Gamra, and family reacted with shock to news of the attack and his arrest Reuters |
In his zeal to avenge the Prophet or simply to become a shaheed, and please Allah by offering up the lives of kufars, the Tunisian man entered the church, slit the 55-year-old sexton's throat, beheaded a 60-year-old woman standing near the alter, then severely slashed and wounded a third woman, 44 years old. The younger woman managed to make her way to a nearby cafe, where she collapsed and died of her grievous wounds. Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi noted the similarity of this attack to the one that killed teacher Samuel Paty.
That the day of this latest atrocity happened to be the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammad is another grim irony; a birthday gift, perhaps? In his native Tunisia, the killer may have known that one of its MPs had asserted the right of Muslims to take deadly vengeance on anyone who mocked their prophet. The Tunisian parliament was not pleased and discussion ensued whether to remove the man from his parliamentary post. They plan to undertake an enquiry of their own.
President Macron declared once again that nothing would subdue or subordinate France to a fascist ideology's demands, that secular France would bow to no religion, and he planned to deploy thousands of additional military personnel in the protection of vulnerable and vital French sites such as places of worship and schools. France had been attacked "over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief. And I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground", he said, speaking from Nice.
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| The suspect was detained minutes after the attack at the basilica EPA |
The 21-year-old Brahim Aoulssaoui arrived at Nice railway station at 5:47 a.m. from Lampedusa, the closest European point of entry from Tunisia used by migrants from Africa. He was not known by Tunisian police as a suspected militant, according to the country's counter-militancy court whose spokesman informed that he had left on September 14 by boat for Italy. Witnesses to the attack gave testimony of how the attack went forward and how it ended, validated by mobile phone footage and official accounts.
During the attack someone ran to a bakery shop located beside the church asking staff to call police. "I thought it was a joke, I didn't believe it", one of the bakery staff said, but at the person';s insistence, one of the people from the bakery walked over to the church, pressed an intercom button to alert the municipal police and they arrived within 30 seconds. "When the attacker came out [of the church], there was a kind of panic around the concourse [surrounding the church. There was blood visible", one witness recounted.
After the attacker was taken into custody, parishioners gathered for news about the victims. "We just found out on TV that our sexton was assassinated. We're in shock", said one of the parishioners, speaking of the well-liked sexton, a father of two children. "He did his job as a sexton very well. He was a very kind person", added Gil Florini, a Catholic priest in Nice.
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| On Thursday evening people gathered outside the church to light candles for the victims Getty Images |
Labels: France, Murder, Nice, Terrorism, Tunisian Assassin
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, October 31, 2020
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