Only three days have passed since the brutal knife attack on four children between two and three years old and two adults in a playground in Annecy, a French town at the foot of the Alps, and the issue has already moved into the political arena, to be a weapon throwing The French government has criticized the political use of the attack: as the attacker is a refugee of Syrian origin, some parties have called for a tougher immigration policy, which they consider too lax.
Annecy has held this Sunday a concentration in support of the victims in which the mayor of the town, the environmentalist François Astorg, has made an appeal not to “give in to the temptation of hatred”.
The French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, criticized this Sunday the political use of the attack. “Wanting to draw lessons when the investigation is not finished, does not seem like a good method to me,” Borne pointed out in an interview with France 3 channel, in which she insisted that there are many elements that still need to be clarified.
The children and one of the two injured adults remain hospitalized, although all are out of danger. The detainee, a 31-year-old Syrian who has refugee status in Sweden, is already in provisional detention. He is in an isolation cell, charged with the crimes of attempted murder. On Saturday he appeared before the investigating judges, but he did not want to give a statement. He also did not want to make a statement to the agents during his police custody.
Investigators rule out for the moment that he had a terrorist motivation. A psychiatric examination has been carried out, which has ruled out that she had altered mental faculties.
The attacker was in a legal situation and declares himself a Christian. He had applied for asylum in France despite already having refugee status in Sweden. For this reason, on the day of the attack, some leaders of the extreme right already questioned the government’s immigration policy. Jordan Bardella, president of National Rally, Marine Le Pen’s party, said that the reception policy would have to be reconsidered. The far-right Éric Zemmour spoke of “francocide”. Most of the assaulted children, however, were tourists.
Even Los Republicanos, a traditional right-wing party that is the key to the Macronist majority in the Assembly to be able to push through its laws, has questioned the issue of immigration. One of its leaders, Éric Ciotti, related what happened to a migration policy in France and in the EU, and has asked to meet with the president, Emmanuel Macron, to discuss the issue.
The attack on Thursday and the political controversy anticipate a debate: that of the immigration law that the Government is going to take to the Assembly in the autumn. The law should have been debated before the summer, but the Government decided to postpone it due to a lack of parliamentary support and in order not to add fuel to the fire after the crisis opened by the approval of the pension reform, which raises the retirement age of the 62 to 64 years old and that has opened a deep crisis in the country.
Borne recalled this Sunday, in the aforementioned interview, that the Government is negotiating with the Republicans a bill to speed up the expulsions of migrants in an irregular situation and those whose asylum application is rejected.
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