PARIS: France charged a suspected gunman on Monday with last week’s murder of three Kurds in Paris, as hundreds of people marched in the French capital to pay tribute to the victims.

The 69-year-old suspect had confessed to a “pathological” hatred for foreigners and spent nearly a day in a psychiatric facility before being returned to police custody on Sunday, authorities said.

The judge charged the man with murder, attempted murder because of race, ethnicity, nationality or religion as well as for the unauthorised procurement and possession of a weapon, a judicial source said.

The shooting at a Kurdish cultural centre and a nearby hairdressing salon on Friday sparked panic in the city’s bustling 10th district, home to numerous shops and restaurants and a large Kurdish population. Three others were wounded in the attack but none were in a life-threatening condition, with one out of hospital.

The violence has revived the trauma of three unresolved murders of Kurds in 2013 that many blame on Turkey. The community has also expressed anger at the French security services, saying they had done too little to prevent the shooting.

The frustration boiled over on Saturday and furious demonstrators clashed with police in central Paris for a second day running after a tribute rally.

On Monday several hundred people marched in the 10th district, chanting “Our martyrs do not die” in Kurdish and demanding “truth and justice”. Small altars bearing candles, flowers and the photographs of the three victims who were fatally shot were put up on the pavement.

A procession headed to another street in the same neighbourhood where three activists from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an organisation Turkey and its Western allies deem terrorist, were killed in January 2013.

Some in the Kurdish community raised their suspicion that Turkey was involved in Friday’s shooting, but French investigators have not made any announcements to that effect.

“We decided to come as soon as we heard about Friday’s terrorist attack,” one young woman told AFP, declining to give her name for fear of reprisals.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2022