Following the attack, the suspect—who was brought before a Paris court today—showed no remorse for his actions and admitted that he targeted individuals of the Muslim faith and people of African descent, Christen stated during a press conference.
The assailant, who last Friday fired 128 rounds across eight different locations within a 12-kilometer radius, was brought before an investigating judge from the PNAT to answer for his actions, according to the television channel BFMTV.
The court’s role in this case is to issue formal charges for several offenses, including a terrorist act with a clear racial motive.
The PNAT took charge of the case and launched an immediate investigation into charges of murder and attempted murder linked to a terrorist enterprise.
The far-right leanings of the accused—in whose possession a copy of *Mein Kampf*, by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, was found—triggered a crisis within the legislature earlier this week.
For left-wing and social-democratic parliamentary groups, this represents an unacceptable act of racism in contemporary France; they also view it as a consequence of rhetoric from the far right, which has claimed that immigrants are responsible for the looting of businesses seen in recent days.
The perpetrator, a 39-year-old French citizen, carried out the attacks—mostly from inside his vehicle—using an automatic rifle, targeting individuals he assumed to be Muslim or immigrants of African descent, though the person killed was a French citizen.
In response to these accusations, the right presented its arguments in such a way that it ultimately blamed the “far left” for the violence in the country—and, by extension, for the events that took place a week ago.
These assertions prompted the left-wing parliamentary groups to walk out of a session of the National Assembly (the lower house) in protest, as they felt that the far right was incapable of taking responsibility, even in the face of evidence of a xenophobic act.
The murder of Pongo Bossio Wangi—a 26-year-old French man of Congolese origin—led to the organization of anti-racist demonstrations in two parts of the capital.
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