Former far-right politician shoots 2 outside French mosque
84-year-old Claude Sinké arrested after attack in southwestern city of Bayonne that left two victims, aged 74 and 78, in serious condition
Two men in their 70s were seriously wounded Monday in a shooting in front of a mosque in Bayonne, a city in the Basque region of southwest France, by a suspected shooter identified by police as a former political candidate for the far-right National Front party.
Police told French media the suspect, who was arrested shortly after the shooting, was Claude Sinké, a candidate for the National Front party, now known as the National Rally party, in the 2015 county elections in the canton of Seignanx.
Sinké, 84, reportedly also tried to set the mosque’s door on fire, and successfully ignited a vehicle as he fled after the attack.
He was arrested by police a short time after the attack, French officials said.
“At 3:20 p.m., a man tried to burn the door of the Bayonne mosque, was surprised by two people, and opened fire on them,” a police statement said.
The two victims were rushed to hospital in serious condition from multiple bullet wounds. They were 74 and 78 years old, according to police.
There was no immediate information on their identities.
National Rally head Marine Le Pen slammed the “unspeakable act,” calling it “absolutely contrary” to her party’s values.
“The attack on #Bayonne’s mosque is an unspeakable act that is absolutely contrary to all the values of our movement,” she wrote in a Twitter post.
Police sappers raided Sinké’s home near Bayonne as officers established a security perimeter around the mosque and launched an investigation.
There have been intermittent attacks on mosques in France since 2007, when 148 Muslim headstones in a national military cemetery near Arras were smeared with anti-Islamic slurs and a pig’s head was placed among them.
In June this year, a gunman wounded an imam in a shooting at a mosque in the northwestern city of Brest, but police ruled out a terror motive.
In March, workers building a mosque in the small southwestern town of Bergerac found a pig’s head and animal blood at the entrance to the site — two weeks after a gunman killed 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in a shooting spree at two mosques.
Mosques were also targeted after the killing of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in 2015 by Islamist radicals. Dozens of mosques were attacked by arsonists, others with firebombs, grenades or gunfire.
The Times of Israel Community.