Intervening lawyer urges judges to "explore all avenues"

A recently disclosed psychiatric report on the mental condition of the suspect in the case of the triple murder of Kurds in Paris on 23 December states that while the suspect's examination did not reveal "an evolving or established mental illness," it "revealed personality disorders in a register of paranoia of character," French media said on Thursday.

These personality disorders justify "to a certain extent, that we consider his discernment as having been altered," the experts said, adding however: "William Malet was not affected at the time of the incident by a psychic or neuropsychic disorder having abolished his discernment or the control of his actions.”

The suspect William Malet, a retired train driver, who had a violent criminal history and had just left detention over a previous incident, is accused of killing three Kurds on 23 December near a Kurdish cultural center in Paris. Political activist Emine Kara (Evin Goyi) and political refugee Mir Perwer (Mehmet Sirin Aydin) were among the tree victims, which led representatives of Kurdish associations to voice suspicions that the attack might not have been motivated only by racism, and that Turkish state agencies may be involved, just as they were in the triple murder of three Kurdish women activists in 2013.

“They tried to portray him to us as a depressed individual who did not have all his faculties” but “he is responsible for his actions” and he is criminally responsible, Berivan Firat, spokesperson for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France (CDK-F), told a press conference on Thursday.

Christian Charriere-Bournazel, one of the lawyers of the CDK-F, asks the three investigating judges to explore all avenues "to find out how he could have been mandated or influenced in a very decisive way by agents of the current Turkish government which has only one obsession, to reduce the Kurds."

“We have the feeling that only one track is currently being studied”, that of “a lone wolf who commits an isolated attack”, regretted Agit Polat, another CDK-F representative.

On the day of the events, William Malet "comes precisely to target the Kurdish center, not the nearby Kurdish restaurant or the Kurdish hairdresser's salon," stressed Polat.

In the psychiatric report, it is noted that "he says he does not like the Kurds and the PKK", the Kurdistan Workers' Party which "would carry out actions in Turkey," he said, and asked that the anti-terrorist prosecutor's office take over the investigation.