STRASBOURG: French President Emmanuel Macron visited Strasbourg on Friday, a day after police shot dead a gunman who killed four people at the city’s Christmas market, as investigators probe whether the extremist had any accomplices.
Macron placed a white rose on the Kleber monument, which has become a makeshift memorial in the center of the city with thousands of candles, flowers and messages, as soldiers sang the Marseillaise national anthem.
“The whole nation stands with the people of Strasbourg. This is what I wanted to tell them tonight,” said Macron, who had earlier taken part in a European Union summit in Brussels.
Annette, 80, one of the hundreds attending the Strasbourg memorial, said she “came to pray for those who are no longer here.”
The eastern French city near the German border slowly began to return to normality on Friday, with its famous Christmas market reopening after 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a small-time criminal turned extremist, went on a shooting spree there on Tuesday evening.
He shot dead a Thai tourist, on holiday in Strasbourg with his wife, an Afghan who sought refuge in France some 20 years ago, a 28-year-old Italian journalist in town to cover the European parliament, and a local Frenchman who had just retired.
Twelve people were also wounded in his attack, including one who has been declared brain-dead.
The Daesh group’s propaganda arm said in a Twitter post that Chekatt was one of its “soldiers,” a claim which was dismissed on Friday by France’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner as “completely opportunistic.”
France’s anti-terror prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation was now focusing on whether anyone “helped or encouraged Chekatt preparing or carrying out” the attack — or assisted him while he was on the run.
Seven people were in police custody on Friday, including Chekatt’s parents and two brothers, Heitz said.
Another brother, who like Chekatt was on France’s anti-terror watchlist for suspected extremists, has been detained in Algeria, sources close to the inquiry told AFP.
Officials praised the massive public help and quick police reaction that led to the death of Chekatt, a career criminal with 27 convictions in four countries, late on Thursday.
He was tracked down at around 9:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) when a police patrol spotted him on a street in the Neudorf district where he was last seen after his gun and knife attack on Tuesday night.
Around 800 people called in tips to a hotline after the authorities released his name and photo Wednesday night.
Two calls in particular were “decisive” in finding Chekatt, Heitz said.
The information allowed police to cordon off an area while a helicopter equipped with a heat-seeking camera flew over the gardens.
Spotted by a police patrol, Chekatt tried to escape by entering a building.
Unable to get in the door, he turned and shot at the three officers with a handgun as they tried to approach.
Two police officers returned fire and killed him, Heitz told a press conference in Strasbourg.
Questions remain over how Chekatt was able to evade the tight security perimeter set up around the Christmas market, a prime target for extremist groups.
Around 500 police, security agents and soldiers control access at checkpoints on the bridges leading to the river island, a UN World Heritage site, that houses the market.
The goal is to “create a bubble with searches at the entry points,” Mayor Roland Ries said after the attack, while regional government representative Jean-Luc Marx said he had not determined “any flaws in the security measures.”
France has been on high alert since the start of a wave of extremist attacks in 2015, which prompted a threefold surge in the security budget for the market, to one million euros.
Chekatt, a Strasbourg native who lived in a rundown apartment block a short drive from the city center, was flagged by French security forces in 2015 as a possible Islamic extremist.
But Defense Minister Florence Parly rejected criticism that Chekatt’s presence on the extremist watchlist should have prompted a more proactive reaction from the authorities.
“You can’t... arrest someone just because you think he might do something,” Parly told Radio Classique on Friday.
Strasbourg’s deputy mayor Alain Fontanel admitted that despite patrols, plainclothes police, profilers and video surveillance, “the risks can be reduced, but not eliminated.”
“We can’t pat down and search everyone, only carry out random checks,” he said, adding that huge lines at checkpoints would only create a new potential target for terrorists.
“Someone who wants to get in an area this big with a weapon can do it,” he said.
Macron visits Strasbourg as police probe shooter’s potential accomplices
Macron visits Strasbourg as police probe shooter’s potential accomplices
- Seven people are in police custody, including shooter Cherif Chekatt’s parents and two brothers
- Another brother, who like Chekatt was on France’s anti-terror watchlist for suspected extremists, has been detained in Algeria
Russia warns French troops legitimate targets if they are sent to Ukraine
- French president Emmanuel Macron caused controversy in February by saying he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future
Macron caused controversy in February by saying he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future. The French leader warned that if Russia wins in Ukraine then Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero.
“It is characteristic that Macron himself explains this rhetoric with the desire to create some kind of ‘strategic uncertainty’ for Russia,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“We have to disappoint him — for us the situation looks more than certain,” Zakharova said.
“If the French appear in the conflict zone, they will inevitably become targets for the Russian armed forces. It seems to me that Paris already has proof of this.”
Zakharova said Russia was already seeing growing numbers of French nationals among those killed in Ukraine.
Russia said on Monday it would practice the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what the Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the United States.
AstraZeneca says withdraws Covid vaccine ‘for commercial reasons’
LONDON: British drugmaker AstraZeneca said Wednesday that it has withdrawn its Covid vaccine Vaxzevria, one of the first produced in the pandemic, citing “commercial reasons” and a surplus of updated jabs.
“As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have since been developed there is a surplus of available updated vaccines. This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied,” an AstraZeneca spokeperson said.
3 Indian men charged with killing Sikh separatist leader in Canada appear in court
SURREY, British Columbia: Three Indian men charged with killing Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia last year have appeared in court in the case that set off a diplomatic spat after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement.
Canadian police had arrested the three Indian men last week in Edmonton, Alberta, and they have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Mandeep Mooker said Friday that the investigation into whether the men had ties to India’s government was ongoing.
Nijjar, 45, was shot to death in his pickup truck last June after he left the Sikh temple he led in the city of Surrey. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland. India designated him a terrorist in 2020 and at the time of his death had been seeking his arrest for alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest.
India has denied involvement in the slaying. In response to the allegations, India told Canada last year to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats in the country. Tensions remain but have somewhat eased since.
The arrested men — Kamalpreet Singh, 22, Karan Brar, 22, and Karanpreet Singh, 28 — appeared in court Tuesday via a video link and agreed to a trial in English. They were ordered to appear in British Columbia Provincial Court again on May 21.
Brar and Karanpreet Singh appeared in the morning. Kamalpreet’s appearance was delayed until the afternoon as he waited to speak to a lawyer.
The small provincial courtroom was filled with spectators during the morning session. Others crowded into an overflow room to watch the proceedings via video.
Richard Fowler, the defense lawyer representing Brar, said the case will eventually be moved to the Supreme Court and combined into one case.
About 100 people gathered outside the courthouse waving yellow flags and holding photos of Indian government officials whom they accuse of being involved in Nijjar’s killing.
Canadian police say the three suspects had been living in Canada as non-permanent residents.
A bloody decadelong Sikh insurgency shook north India in the 1970s and 1980s until it was crushed in a government crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.
The Khalistan homeland movement has lost much of its political power but still has supporters in the Indian state of Punjab, as well as in the sizable overseas Sikh diaspora. While the active insurgency ended years ago, the Indian government has repeatedly warned that Sikh separatists were trying to make a comeback.
UN: Myanmar displaced now at 3 million
- An estimated one-third of those displaced are children, according to the UN statement
YANGON: The number of displaced people in Myanmar has reached three million, the United Nations said, the vast majority forced to flee their homes by conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup.
Around 2.7 million have fled since the putsch that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s government after a short-lived experiment with democracy.
The coup sparked renewed clashes with established ethnic armed groups and birthed dozens of new “People’s Defense Forces” that the military has failed to crush.
“Myanmar stands at the precipice in 2024 with a deepening humanitarian crisis,” the UN’s resident coordinator in the country said in a statement released on Monday.
An estimated one-third of those displaced are children, according to the statement.
Around half of the three million have been displaced since late last year, when an alliance of ethnic armed groups launched an offensive across northern Shan state, the statement said.
The offensive seized swathes of territory and lucrative trade crossings on the China border, posing the biggest threat to the junta since it seized power.
Myanmar’s borderlands are home to a plethora of ethnic armed groups, many of whom have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 over autonomy and control of lucrative resources.
The UN said a severe funding shortfall was hampering its relief efforts, particularly ahead of the May-June cyclone season.
Last year cyclone Mocha smashed into western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, killing at least 148 people.
More than 355,000 people are currently displaced in western Rakhine state, which has been rocked since November by clashes between the Arakan Army and the military, the UN said.
Russian court says US soldier charged with theft causing ‘significant’ damage
- Detention of Gordon Black presents yet another diplomatic headache for the US
- The US soldier was detained in early May in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East
MOSCOW: US soldier Gordon Black, who has been detained the Russian city of Vladivostok until July 2, has been charged with theft causing significant damage, a Russian court said.
The detention of Black, who the Pentagon said traveled to Russia without authorization, presents yet another diplomatic headache for the United States, which has warned US citizens against all travel to Russia.
He was detained in early May in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East.
The Pervomaisky District Court of Vladivostok said in a statement that it had decided on the preventive measure to detain Black until July 2 for “secretly stealing the property of citizen T., causing the latter significant damage.”
“When choosing the preventive measure in the form of detention, the court came to the conclusion that US citizen B. (Black) — under the weight of the charges — could hide from the preliminary investigation authorities and the court to avoid responsibility,” the court said in the statement.
Earlier, the court’s press service identified the soldier as Gordon Black.
The Russian interior ministry in Vladivostok said on Tuesday that a 32-year-old woman had filed a complaint against the 34-year-old suspect.
The two had met in South Korea. The American had come to Vladivostok to visit her, the two had an argument, and she later filed a police report accusing him of stealing money, it said. He was arrested in a local hotel, having bought a plane ticket to return home.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that before his arrest in Russia, Black not only broke Army rules by traveling to the Russian city of Vladivostok without authorization, but he did so after passing through China.
