Paris, (EFE).- French President Emmanuel Macron today paid tribute to the response of anonymous citizens, police and emergency services to the stabbing of children yesterday, Thursday, in the alpine town of Annecy (southeastern France) while the right and extreme right took advantage of the incident to blame immigration.
The French president traveled today to the alpine city where the attack took place where, as in Grenoble, he visited with his wife Brigitte the hospitals where the wounded are hospitalized.
Macron then went to the government office in Annecy to congratulate and thank the citizens who stood between the attacker and his victims, the police officers who arrested the perpetrator in four minutes, and the emergency and health workers who managed to save the wounded. .
He announced to them that, with “the greatest prudence”, they can “feed the greatest hopes” about the recovery of the injured, four children between the ages of 22 months and three years, and a 78-year-old man, who are in very serious condition. Another injured man is less serious.
“Attacking children is the most barbaric act that exists,” Macron stressed, before stressing that, in the face of this violence, “you have been, each one in your position and your role, an example of professionalism and efficiency.”
“We owe you a lot,” the president acknowledged “on behalf of the nation” and recalled that “when the worst comes,” public services react “as an organic whole” and “a force that organizes” to “protect and come to our help”.
The backpack hero
The president also chatted briefly with Henri, a 24-year-old already known in France as “the hero of the backpack”, after appearing in mobile phone videos confronting the author and making him back while brandishing his backpack as protection against the knife of the attacker. attacker.
Henri, who has become a media star, rejected in different statements that he is considered a national hero. According to his version, he acted “by instinct”, since for him “it was unthinkable not to do anything” and “everyone would have done it in (his) place”.
Three of the injured children (including a two-year-old British girl) as well as the 78-year-old man are hospitalized in Grenoble. The less seriously ill man is in the Annecy hospital.
The fourth injured child, a 22-month-old Dutch national, was rushed yesterday to a hospital in the nearby Swiss city of Geneva.
Meanwhile, the Annecy public prosecutor, Line Bonnet-Mathis, decided today to prolong the author’s arrest and the case is not being investigated as a terrorist act.
The detainee could not be questioned, since his state of high agitation prevents it. However, a psychiatric evaluation determined that he can continue in police custody.
A Syrian Christian refugee in Sweden
He is a 31-year-old Christian Syrian, who had received refugee status in Sweden ten years ago, and arrived in France at the end of last year, where he lived on the streets, and where five days ago he was denied an application for political asylum.
The event, which has shocked all of France due to its irrationality and the young age of the victims, has been used by the leaders of the right and the ultra-right to criticize the migration policy of the Government and the European Union.
The far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, and Éric Ciotti (leader of the conservative Republican party) insisted in different interviews that the author should have been expelled from French territory and to ask that France stop “submitting” to EU policy .
“The attacker should not have been in France,” summarized Ciotti, in an interview with public television.
Asked about the statements of both, the French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, did not react directly but said: “I invite everyone to show dignity.”
Already on Thursday night, a group of ultra-rightists demonstrated through the streets of Annecy with shouts such as “death to the immigrant.”
Instead, the points of the playground where the events occurred are today full of stuffed animals, flowers, candles and messages of affection for the victims that anonymous citizens leave.
