The man arrested following a shooting that killed three people and injured three others in central Paris on Friday was under investigation over acts of racist violence, a Paris prosecutor said.
The suspect was known to law enforcement authorities in the French capital and had been arrested last year after he attacked “tents” where migrants were living in Paris’s 12th district. He had been recently released, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters.
According to several French outlets, the site he attacked last year was a migrant camp.
The suspect is a 69-year-old French national, and is known to authorities for two homicide attempts — in 2016 and December 2021, the AFP reports, quoting a source.
Friday’s shooting took place at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris’s 10th district.
“Regarding the racist motive of the facts, they will of course be part of the investigations which have just started,” the prosecutor said.
Several members of the French government reacted to the shooting. “Thoughts and full support to the victims of the deadly shooting in Paris and their relatives. An investigation has been opened,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne tweeted.
“All my thoughts go to the victims’ relatives,” France Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wrote on Twitter, adding he would be visiting the site of the shooting.
