French authorities announced on Monday that a man has been apprehended in Italy on suspicion of fatally stabbing a young Malian man while the victim was praying inside a mosque in southern France.
The public prosecutor of Ales, Abdelkrim Grini, in the Gard region where the attack occurred on Friday, told BFM TV on Monday, “I can confirm that the alleged perpetrator did indeed go to an Italian police station, near Florence, last night at around 11-11:30 pm.”
“We knew he had left France … It was only a matter of time before we got our hands on him,” he added.
Regarding the motive for the attack, Grini stated, “The anti-Muslim motivation is the preferred lead […] but there are also elements in the investigation that suggest there were other motivations for carrying out the act […] perhaps a fascination with death, to be considered as a serial killer.”
French politicians on Sunday condemned the attack, which was captured on video and circulated on Snapchat.
The suspect is from a Bosnian family, is unemployed, and has connections to the southern Gard region. He resided in the small town of La Grande Combe, located north of Ales.
“He was someone who had remained under the radar of the justice system and the police, and who had never been in the news until these tragic events,” Grini had said on Sunday.
In La Grand-Combe, over 1,000 people gathered on Sunday for a silent march to honor the memory of the victim, Aboubakar Cisse, who was in his twenties.
They marched from the Khadidja Mosque, where the stabbing took place, to the town hall.
Several hundred people also gathered in Paris later on Sunday, including three-time presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who accused Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau of fostering an “Islamophobic climate.”
“Racism and hatred based on religion will never have a place in France,” President Emmanuel Macron said on X on Sunday, expressing “the nation’s support” to the victim’s family and “to our Muslim compatriots.”
France, a country that takes pride in its unique form of secularism known as “laicite,” has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering over 6 million and comprising approximately 10% of the country’s total population.
