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HUNGER STRIKE

Suspected Paris gunman goes on hunger strike

The alleged gunman who brought panic to the streets of Paris during a shooting spree last week has gone on hunger strike, reports in France said on Sunday. Abdelhakim Dekhar, was formally charged by police on Saturday.

Published: 25 November 2013 09:02 CET
Suspected Paris gunman goes on hunger strike
Alleged Paris gunman Abdelhakim Dekhar, who has reportedly gone on hunger strike, is taken in a wheelchair from hospital to prison on Monday morning. Photo: BFMTV/Screengrab

Abdelhakim Dekhar, 48, was arrested Wednesday after a major manhunt following a shooting at the left-wing newspaper Liberation that left a photographer's assistant seriously hurt, and a separate incident where shots were fired at the headquarters of the Societe Generale bank.

On Sunday, a day after being charged with attempted murder, Dekhar stopped taking on food as he began a hunger strike, sources told French media. He is however taking on water, but has so far refused to speak to police or offer any explanation for his acts.

On Saturday he was charged by police and remanded in custody. 

"His guilt… must be proven," his lawyer Remi Lorrain told AFP in a first reaction.

"The police investigation is now over and so are, I hope, the violations of his right to be presumed innocent and statements by people who have nothing to do with the case commenting on my client's suspected motives."

The gathering of evidence would also "help to understand (Dekhar's) personality," he added.

Dekhar had been jailed in the 1990s for his role in a "Bonnie-and-Clyde" style multiple murder and left rambling letters denouncing conspiracies and media manipulation.

On Wednesday, he was found in a vehicle in an underground parking lot in the northwestern Paris suburb of Bois-Colombes, after apparently trying to commit suicide, and was in a semi-conscious state.

His DNA matched samples from the scenes of Monday's attacks, officials said.

The undated letters found by investigators after his attacks are incoherent and attempt to explain his actions.

They denounce capitalism and speak of "a plot aimed at the return of fascism in the media, in banks, in the policy on suburbs," Paris prosecutor Frederic Molins said.

The shooter opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun at Liberation's offices, hitting a 23-year-old photographer's assistant, then fired another blast that hit the roof before leaving within seconds.

He crossed the city to the La Defense business district on its western edge, where he fired several shots outside the main office of the Societe Generale bank, hitting no one. 

He hijacked a car and forced the driver to drop him off in the centre of the French capital, before disappearing.

Police say the shooter was the same man who on November 15th stormed into the Paris headquarters of 24-hour television news channel BFMTV, briefly threatening staff with a gun before hurrying out.

Dekhar was convicted in 1998 of buying a gun used in the October 1994 shooting attack by student Florence Rey and her lover Audry Maupin, who moved in left-wing circles.

Three policemen, a taxi driver and Maupin himself were killed in a case that captivated France.

Rey, a middle-class student hitherto unknown to the police, was tried and sentenced to 20 years in jail. She was released in 2009.

Dekhar was acquitted of armed assault but found guilty of procuring the weapon and sentenced to four years. He was released soon afterwards, having already served his time in pre-trial detention.

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INDEPENDENCE

Interview: Jailed Catalan leader appeals for non-violence at protests

A Catalan pro-independence leader in pre-trial detention for nearly a year has urged separatists to avoid violence during protests planned against a Spanish government meeting in Barcelona on Friday.

Published: 19 December 2018 09:27 CET
Interview: Jailed Catalan leader appeals for non-violence at protests
In this file photo taken on March 23, 2018 Catalan separatist leader Jordi Turull arrives at the Supreme Court in Madrid. Photo: AFP

“I would not like it if people, with their faces covered, demanded my freedom,” Jordi Turull, a former spokesman for the Catalan regional government, told AFP from behind a glass screen at the Lledoners prison some 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Barcelona.

“We have to do as we have always done, which is to protest peacefully,” added Turull, who has been on a hunger strike for 17 days.   

He is one of nine Catalan separatist leaders awaiting trial in jail over Catalonia's failed independence bid last year.   

In total 18 people will stand trial on charges of rebellion, sedition, misuse of public funds and disobedience.

The trial is likely to start in early 2019  — more than a year after Catalan leaders in the northeastern region attempted to break away from Spain in October 2017 by staging a referendum despite a court ban, and then  proclaiming independence to no avail.

Spain's Supreme Court held a preliminary hearing on Wednesday to decide on its competence to hear the case.   

Turull has shed seven kilos (15 pounds) since he started a hunger strike on December 1. Last week he was transferred to the prison's infirmary.   

The casual sports clothes he wore, which contrasted to the sharp suits he used to wear at press conferences, failed to hide the weight loss.

'Provocation'

The 52-year-old said he was concerned by some recent protests by radical separatists, who have clashed with police.   

“I don't like some of the images I have seen,” he said, citing a demonstration in the city of Girona on December in which 15 police officers were injured as an example.

“This is not our way of doing things,” Turull said. 

Similar scenes could play out again on Friday when Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez holds an cabinet meeting in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia which is split over the issue of independence.

Pro-independence groups have called on their supporters to take to the streets to protest against the meeting, which coincides with the one-year anniversary of snap polls in Catalonia called by Spain's central government after the region unsuccessfully declared independence.

Separatist parties once again won an absolute majority in the Catalan parliament in the election, even though many candidates were in jail or self-imposed exiled over their role in the failed independence bid.

“Over ten percent of lawmakers elected that day are in jail or in exile. To come on that day is a provocation,” said Turull.

'Dream of tuna can'

He began his hunger strike on December 1 along with another jailed Catalan leader, Jordi Sanchez, the former head of grassroots separatist group ANC, to protest what they say was a Constitutional Court block of their attempted appeal to the European court of human Rights against their provisional detention.

They were joined by two more Catalan leaders at the Lledoners prison two days later.   

“We saw that there was a coordinated action to not allow us to go before European justice…You reach a moment when you have to shake things up because this is normalising a violation of rights,” said Turull.

Turull denied allegations that the aim of the hunger strike is to draw attention away from a wave of protests the Catalan government has faced against austerity measures, or to mask splits within the pro-independence camp.   

He said the hardest part of the hunger strike was the “psychological aspect”.

“I dream of a tuna can,” Turull said, adding that while the hunger strike is open-ended, he promised his family that he would not put his life at risk.   

Turull said he wants to “be strong” for his trial.   

“I look forward to going and showing that the charges are a fabrication,” he said.