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Double stabbing in Dresden 2 weeks ago being investigated as terrorist attack
– German prosecutors
21 Oct 2020 16:17
File photo © Reuters / Kai Pfaffenbach
A knife attack in the German city of Dresden a fortnight ago, in which one tourist was killed and a second was seriously injured, is now being treated as a terrorist attack, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Police arrested a 20-year-old Syrian man on Tuesday evening after investigators found evidence linking him to the stabbings. Federal prosecutors in the city of Karlsruhe say he has an Islamist background.
The suspect is accused of attacking two tourists in the eastern German city at the start of October, Dresden police said in an update on Wednesday. The victims, aged 53 and 55, were German men from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia who were on vacation. They were severely injured in the attack, and the older of the pair later died.
The Syrian man was to be brought before Dresden District Court later on Wednesday.
The arrest came days after a Chechen teenager beheaded a French teacher near Paris late last week, after the victim had shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to his pupils.
More fall-out from the Paty beheading in France
France to dissolve pro-Hamas group after Macron claims organization
‘directly implicated’ in teacher’s beheading
21 Oct 2020 13:01
© AFP / Bertrand Guay
France will ban the Cheikh Yassine Collective after President Emmanuel Macron accused the pro-Hamas group of playing a role in the gruesome murder of a geography teacher that shocked the country.
A government spokesman said on Wednesday that the Islamic organization would be banned from the country.
“This is a battle over security, culture and education,” spokesman Gabriel Attal said while announcing the decision.
Macron vowed a day earlier that his cabinet would move to break up the organization, which he accused of being “directly implicated” in the beheading of Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher who was murdered after he showed his students cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of speech. A parent of one of his students made a video condemning the use of the caricatures, and the clip quickly spread among the local Muslim community.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin had earlier told French radio that the group, named after the assassinated Palestinian co-founder of the Hamas movement, “apparently launched a fatwa” against Paty. Hamas has denied any links with the French organization.
Paty was murdered in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris, by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee on October 16. The killing sent shockwaves through France and sparked demonstrations.
As part of a crackdown on Islamic extremism, Macron’s government has conducted numerous raids and temporarily closed a local mosque that shared a video denouncing Paty.
French newspaper faces threats after republishing Prophet Mohammed cartoon
21 Oct 2020 12:20
People gather at the Place de la Republique in Paris, to pay tribute to Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was beheaded on the streets of the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France, October 18, 2020. © REUTERS/Charles Platiau
Following the assassination of a French teacher in Paris, a regional newspaper has received threats after it republished a satirical drawing of the Prophet Mohammed from magazine Charlie Hebdo.
La Nouvelle Republique newspaper was attacked on social media after it published a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed on its front page on Sunday, in an editorial response to last week’s brutal killing of teacher Samuel Paty.
Editorial director of La Nouvelle Republique, Christophe Herigault, told BFM TV on Wednesday that, despite the mostly positive response that their front page got on October 18, they received “four or five threats, notably on Facebook, which has led us to lodge a judicial complaint.”
Herigault defended the publication's decision to publish the cartoon despite the threats, stating that “there was absolutely no desire to provoke” but it was done to express the paper's anger over the teacher's killing.
And yet, you knew it would provoke!
The police in France have not yet commented on the recent threats. However, French President Emmanuel Macron promised on Tuesday to take “concrete actions” against “the evil that is radical Islam” and announced that the Cheikh Yassine Collective, a Muslim group linked to Hamas that was “directly implicated” in the recent murder, would be broken up.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also called for two Islamic NGOs to be dissolved, after they were accused of taking part in a social media campaign against Paty that led to his death.
Paty’s brutal killing has provoked deep emotions across France, which has a long history of combating violent acts of extremism, and sparked rallies to pay tribute to him and pledge support for free speech throughout the nation.
Less than a month before Paty’s murder, four people were wounded outside the old headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in retaliation for the magazine republishing a 2015 front page that featured a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed. The act was to mark the start of the trial of three men accused of aiding a terrorist attack carried out against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Twelve people were killed at the magazine’s office by gunmen angered by Charlie Hebdo’s publication of caricatures of the Islamic prophet.
Indre, France
Backlash on the streets, not just the government
‘Go home to your own country!‘: Two women arrested for apparent racially aggravated knife attack near Paris’ Eiffel Tower
21 Oct, 2020 09:14
FILE PHOTO: Three police officers pass in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. © Global Look Press / Alexis Sciard
Two Muslim women were seriously injured in an apparent racially motivated attack near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The two female suspects arrested over the incident have been charged with attempted murder.
The victims, identified as French women with an Algerian background, were walking in a group of five adults and four children when they were approached by two dogs off their leashes. When they asked the owners to restrain the animals, they were attacked in a vicious assault.
The women were stabbed repeatedly by two other women of “European appearance,” who reportedly shouted “dirty Arabs” and “Go home to your own country” during the attack.
One victim was stabbed six times, suffering a punctured lung and injuries to her hands which required surgical intervention.
Two bystanders intervened and reportedly restrained one of the attackers until police arrived. The second suspect was arrested shortly after. The attack took place on Sunday night but police declined to release a statement until Tuesday.
The horrific incident comes just one week after the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, 47, in a terrorist attack which shocked the country and exacerbated existing tensions within French society.
Paty was decapitated outside the Bois-d'Aulne school in the north of Paris, where he taught French and geography, by Russian-born 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzarov, in apparent response to the showing of depictions of the Prophet Mohammed to children.
France’s Muslim community, made up of some five million people, says it has experienced a rising tide of Islamophobia in the wake of the incident, which sparked mass protests in the French capital and a government clampdown on mosques and a variety of Muslim organizations.
There is no doubt that French tolerance of Muslim violence is wearing very thin. Both government and the public appear to have had enough. We can expect violence from all sides to increase. It will not be a pretty site and the end of it is very uncertain.
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