Religious hate has no place in France, says Macron after Muslim man killed in mosque

LA GRAND-COMBE, France: There can never be a place for racism and hate in France, President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday after the brutal stabbing to death of a Muslim in a mosque in the south of the country.

“Racism and hatred based on religion can have no place in France. Freedom of worship cannot be violated,” Macron wrote on X in his first comments on Friday’s killing, extending his support to “our fellow Muslim citizens”.

The attacker, who is on the run, stabbed Aboubakar Cisse, a young Malian in his early 20s dozens of times and then filmed him with a mobile phone while shouting insults at Islam in Friday’s attack in the village of La Grand-Combe in the Gard region.

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou had already denounced what he described as an “Islamophobic atrocity” although the prosecutor in the case has emphasised that Islamophobia is just one of the motives being considered.

Around 1,000 people on Sunday marched through La Grand Combe, which has just 5,000 inhabitants, to remember the victim.

The alleged perpetrator sent the video he had filmed with his phone -- showing the victim writhing in agony -- to another person, who then shared it on a social media platform before deleting it.

A source close to the case, who asked not to be named, said the suspected perpetrator, while not apprehended, had been identified as a French citizen of Bosnian origin who is not a Muslim. The victim, a young Malian man in his 20s, and the attacker were alone inside the mosque at the time of the incident. After initially praying alongside the man, the attacker then stabbed the victim up to 50 times before fleeing the scene.

The body of the victim was only discovered later in the morning when other worshippers arrived at the mosque for Friday prayers.

A protest “against Islamophobia” was due to take place Sunday evening in Paris in response to the killing.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said it was “horrified” by the “anti-Muslim terrorist attack” and urged Muslims in France to be “extremely vigilant”.

“The murder of a worshipper in a mosque is a despicable crime that must revolt the hearts of all French people,” added the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF).

The attacker has been named only as Olivier A., born in France in 2004 and unemployed without a criminal record. He is “potentially extremely dangerous” and it is “essential” to arrest him before he claims more victims, said regional prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini. But while the motive of Islamophobia is the lead that the 70 investigators are “working on as a priority... it is not the only one,” Grini said.

There are “certain elements (which) could suggest that this motive was perhaps not the primary motive... or the only motive,” he added, without elaborating.

Grini was speaking in the regional centre of Ales alongside Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, a hardline right-winger who takes a tough line on immigration and Islamism.

Retailleau emphasised that “the possibility of an anti-Muslim act has not been neglected at all, quite the contrary.”