Police officers fanned out in the French capital on Monday in search of the man responsible for a shooting at a newspaper headquarters that left one man gravely wounded and the city on edgereports the New York Times' Scott Sayare.
In what may be related episodes, a man opened fire later in the morning outside the headquarters of a major bank and there were reports that an armed individual in the same area had stopped a car and forced its driver to drive him to the Champs-Élysées.
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A young photographer’s assistant, 23 years old, happened to be standing at the entrance of our daily newspaper Monday morning,
writes Libération's Annette Lévy-Willard, as she recounts what happened and tries to figure out who was behind the attack. Needless to say, she suggests that it is a bitter, gay-bashing French racist.
when a man armed with a shotgun came through the sliding door, straight off a pleasant street in the Marais.As if this were a horror movie, the gunman, white, wearing a black cap and vest, moved toward the young photographer and shot him at least twice, at near-point blank range. He was struck by blasts in the chest and an arm.
Our colleague was rushed to a Paris hospital, where he was in the operating room for hours. We hope desperately he will recover.
But why would Libération be the target of such violence? The man-with-a-cap is suspected of being involved in a similar incident on Friday, when a gunman entered the building of the TV news channel BFM, threatened staff members but left without harming anyone. If this is the same man, does he have a grudge against the press?Libération is a daily newspaper of the Left founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir —this year, almost to the day, we are celebrating our 40th anniversary. Libération is a “liberal” or “progressive” newspaper, as you might say in the United States. Editorially, it is supportive of gay marriage, a recent controversy in France. Traditionally, Libération also takes positions against racism and xenophobia. Earlier this month, the newspaper ran a long interview with Christiane Taubira, France’s black minister of justice, who had promoted the government’s new law permitting same-sex marriage.
In October, a candidate for the National Front compared Ms. Taubira to a “monkey.” Picking up on the theme, right-wing demonstrators taunted her with a banana. At first, Ms. Taubira maintained a dignified silence about the abuse, but finally, she told Libération: “These racist attacks are attacking the heart of our democracy.”
So we have two stories here: first, it turns out that gun control countries like France are hardly as safe from gun violence as they claim to be — as they claim to be in their usual tirades against the clueless idiot cowboys over in the lawless United States.
Second, contrary to the (desperate) wishes of the bien-pensant, the perpetrator turns out, as it happens, not to be a typical bitter white Frenchman clinging to his religion (and to his guns). He is a Muslim.
Since Annette Lévy-Willard's tirade came out, indeed, the shootist has been captured; as the BBC reports:
Since Annette Lévy-Willard's tirade came out, indeed, the shootist has been captured; as the BBC reports:
French authorities have named a man taken into custody on suspicion of carrying out recent gun attacks in Paris as Abdelhakim Dekhar
The suspect threatened a TV station last Friday, and attacked a newspaper office and a bank HQ on Monday.
… The intruder emptied the chamber of his gun in the reception area without firing, saying: "Next time, I will not miss you."