NÎMES: A French man accused of stabbing a 22-year-old Malian to death in a mosque appears to have acted alone on an obsessive “urge to kill”, a prosecutor said Friday.
The murder in the southern village of La Grand-Combe has shaken the country and prompted President Emmanuel Macron to insist there was no place for religious hate in French society.
A French national of Bosnian origin who surrendered to police in Italy is now awaiting extradition to France over the murder of Aboubakar Cisse.
The 20-year-old suspect, named as Olivier Hadzovic, seems to have acted without any “ideological claim or link with an organisation that would propagate an ideological claim … through intimidation or terror”, said Cecile Gensac, prosecutor in the southern city of Nimes, explaining why investigators did not consider it a “terrorist” crime.
She said the suspect had a year earlier expressed online an urge to “rape” and “murder”.
According to one witness, Hadzovioc had said “he wanted to physically hurt someone, without saying who or where, and without referring to an ethnicity or religion, driven by a fierce desire to kill someone and failing that, to commit suicide,“ the prosecutor said.
She detailed an exchange he had with another person on the morning of the attack.
“I’m going to do it today. I’ll do it in the street,“ he said.
Once on site, he wrote: “He’s black. I’m going to do it.”
The suspect is believed to have stabbed his victim 57 times, filming himself to post the attack on social media and insulting “Allah”.
