VILLIERS-LE-BEL: Thousands of Kurds from across Europe travelled to the Paris suburbs on Tuesday for the politically charged funeral of three of their own killed in a December attack in the French capital.
Buses were chartered to bring people from across France and some neighbouring countries to the ceremony in Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris, local sources said.
Tears and cries of “Martyrs live forever!” greeted the coffins, wrapped in the flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdish-controlled Rojava territory in northern Syria.
The huge crowd followed the funeral on giant screens erected in the car park, showing the coffins surrounded by wreaths beneath a portrait of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Police and security volunteers were on duty outside the hall hired for Tuesday’s proceedings.
A xenophobic gunman, William Malet, killed two men and one woman in a December 23 attack on the Ahmet Kaya community centre in Paris’s 10th district.
His victims were Abdurrahman Kizil, singer and political refugee Mir Perwer and Emine Kara, a leader of the Movement of Kurdish Women in France.
Arrested after the shootings and formally charged on December 26, 69-year-old Malet told investigators he had a “pathological” hatred for foreigners and wanted to “murder migrants”, prosecutors said.
Malet, a retired train driver, had a violent criminal history and had just left detention over a previous incident.
But many Kurds in France’s 150,000-strong community refuse to believe he acted alone, calling his actions a “terrorist” attack and pointing the finger at Turkey.
Tuesday’s funeral recalled another held at the same spot almost exactly 10 years ago after three Kurdish activists linked to the PKK were shot dead, also in Paris’ 10th district.The Turkish suspect in the killings, believed to have had ties to Ankara’s secret services, died of cancer in pre-trial detention.
More recently, an April attack in which men were beaten with iron bars at a Kurdish cultural centre in eastern French city Lyon was blamed on members of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves group, which has since been banned. — AFP
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