Five weeks after the murder of Aboubakar Cissé, a young Malian Muslim who was stabbed to death on April 25 in a mosque, a second murder with racial and anti-Muslim motives has taken place in the south of France. The victim, a 45-year-old Tunisian man, was shot dead on Saturday, May 31, in the town Puget-sur-Argens, near the French Riviera. In both cases, prosecutors said racism was an aggravating factor. However, unlike the first case, which was handled by a local investigating judge, this time the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has taken over the investigation.
This preliminary investigation by the PNAT was opened on Monday on charges of “premeditated murder and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise, committed on the basis of race or religion,” as well as “criminal terrorist conspiracy.” Since the resurgence of the far-right terrorist threat, noted in 2017 by the intelligence services, the justice system has opened 20 terrorist investigations linked to this ideology, mainly for foiled attack plots. However, in its six years of existence since its creation in 2019, the PNAT had never before dealt with a homicide potentially inspired by far-right ideas.
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