After a Muslim was stabbed to death in a mosque in the French city of Alès, the media quickly pointed to an anti-Muslim motive. Images of neo-Nazis stabbing Muslims in their places of worship were conjured, and thousands were mobilized onto the streets to protest against violence directed at Muslims. However, this narrative may be more complicated.
In fact, the suspect in the case comes from an immigrant family himself, a Bosnian Roma, who has now turned himself into the police in Italy after going on the run for three days.
A police source has told Le Parisien that so far, a picture is forming of the youth, Olivier Hadzovic, as “a rather socially isolated, unemployed (man) addicted to video games, to which he devoted most of his time, he had until now been living on welfare.” Hadzovic had 11 siblings.
In addition, he allegedly produced disturbing messages on social media, “mentioning his desire to rape or desecrate corpses.” However, police have so far found no evidence of racist or hateful posts, including any against Muslims.
In addition, Hadzovic’s lawyer said after he was questioned by police that he appeared to have been driven by a morbid impulse “to kill the first person he found.” In other words, the evidence, at least so far, points more to a sadistic killer who targeted his victim.
The murder was especially graphic, as Hadzovic stabbed the Muslim man multiple times while filming the entire incident, which was posted to social media. The victim, Aboubakar Cissé, was sitting prostate and praying when he was stabbed several dozen times. Hadzovic insulted the victim’s religion after the stabbing, shouting insults at Allah, but whether this was a premeditated attack against a Muslim, or simply a nihilistic insult directed at the victim in his final moments, still remains to be seen.
There is also no evidence that Hadzovic belonged to any nationalist or anti-Muslim organization. As mentioned, he was not even an ethnic Frenchman, but instead a man from a Roma immigrant family who appeared to have some very disturbing sexual interests and was unemployed — typically the type of person most French nationalists want to see deported from France.
However, France’s left seized on the stabbing death of Aboubakar Cissé in the Grand-Combe mosque to decry racism in the country, holding large demonstrations.
“Aboubakar Cisse’s only crime was being in a mosque. Aboubakar Cisse’s only crime was being Muslim. So this was an assassination, a terrorist attack that the High Council of Malians in France strongly condemns, and asks for this kind of crime never to happen again,” said Addramane Macalou, representative of the High Council of Malians in France.
Three days after the killing, Hadzovic turned himself in at an Italian police station in Pistoia, Italy.
Abdelkrim Grini, the Alès prosecutor who led the investigation, opened an investigation into premeditated murder based on race or religion. The case has been referred to an investigating judge from the Nîmes criminal division, and not to the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office. The family is requesting that the case be treated as an act of terrorism.