The murderer of Aboubakar Cissé, a 22 -year -old Malian killed dozens of stab wounds in a mosque in the south of France, acted “in an isolated context”, guided by an “obsessive desire to kill” which he had largely shared on social networks, according to the prosecution.
Olivier Hadzovic, a 20 -year -old Frenchman, “acted in an isolated context, without ideological demand or link with an organization (…). The springs to act of the aggressor very quickly appeared to be deeply personal, the desire to kill someone, whatever the target “, against a backdrop of” morbid fascination “, said the prosecutor of Nîmes at a press conference on Friday.
Nothing allows for the moment to explain why “he enters this mosque” and attacks this specific person, insisted Cécile Gensac, recalling the testimony of a young woman who had reported the online content of the future murderer, where he had expressed, for a year already, “desires of rape of women, murders or rapes of corpse”.
Then the magistrate detailed the messages of the murderer the same morning of the facts, Friday, April 25, on an online discussion group. He writes in particular, once there: “He is black (evoking his future victim, editor’s note), I will do it.”
Finally, just after the murder, in a video broadcast on Instagram which he filmed in front of his dying victim, to whom he wore 57 stabs in total, he said twice: “I did it (…), your allah shitty.”
The first investigations paint a portrait of a young man born in the south of France in a Christian family who is not practicing 11 children, consumer of violent videos, in particular of people scarce live, said the magistrate.
Two days before the facts, he had expressed his intention to take action, and two Internet users had made an online report. According to one of these two witnesses, the murderer described himself as “schizophrenic” in his video just after the facts, where he adds that he must commit “two new facts to become a serial killer”.
“At this stage”, therefore, the National Anti -terrorist prosecution (PNAT) did not retain the terrorist qualification, confirmed the prosecutor of Nîmes. But that does not mean “a relativization of the gravity of the facts”, for which perpetuity is incurred, insisted the magistrate, according to whom the PNAT “will remain in observation” on this file.
Lawyers of the Cissé family had announced earlier their intention to file a complaint for the investigation to be precisely requalified as a terrorist assassination.
Accelerated extradition
On the run for almost three days, the murderer went on Sunday evening to Italy, at the Pistoia – near Florence – police station – accompanied by an aunt and a lawyer.
Olivier Hadzovic “agreed to be given to France because he wants to return home,” said his Italian lawyer on Wednesday, Me Giovanni Salvietti: “And therefore the accelerated extradition procedure has been set up, which will allow Olivier to be able to return to France around mid-May”.
“My son is crazy. It’s 100% not normal what he did. I apologize for the family … I’m sorry. He is in the process of assuming, “said a man on Friday presenting himself as the father of the suspect, on television.
In his first statements to the Italian investigators, the young man recognized the murder of Aboubakar Cissé but denied having acted by hatred of Islam, indicating, according to his lawyer, “having killed the first person he found” on his way.
At the Khadidja mosque in the Grand-Combe, in the south of France, where Aboubakar Cissé was killed, some 700 people, according to an AFP correspondent, gathered on Friday for a mortuary prayer.
Elsewhere in France, mosques have also organized without body funeral prayers, “Salat al-Ghaib”, on the sidelines of their traditional Friday prayers.
Before the burial planned in Mali, the coffin will be welcomed on Monday at the Grande Mosque de Paris.
The same day, the family of Aboubakar Cissé will be received by the French Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, at the same time as representatives of the High Council of Malians of France. Mr. Retailleau was widely criticized, on the left and by the victim’s family, for never having moved to the Grand-Combe and not having yet received relatives of the victim.
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