The Paris prosecutor's office on Wednesday 20 October opened a judicial investigation for "
willful violence
" accompanied by racist remarks, after the stabbing attack on Sunday of two women near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, AFP learned from the Paris prosecutor's office.
Two suspects, placed in police custody Tuesday at the 7th arrondissement police station, will be presented to an investigating judge responsible for investigating this altercation, part of the presence of a dog considered threatening by two women, who were then injured with a knife.
Read also: Paris: two women attacked with a knife on Sunday near the Eiffel Tower, an investigation in progress
The case had been widely relayed via a video on social networks, some Internet users denouncing a "
media silence
" on this aggression which they qualified as Islamophobic, a few days after the assassination on Friday of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded by from his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
The Paris public prosecutor's office had opened an investigation for "
attempted murder
", but the facts were reclassified as "
willful violence
" at the end of police custody.
According to the public prosecutor, this violence is aggravated in particular by the fact that it was committed in a meeting, with the use of a weapon, and that it was accompanied by comments related to "
belonging or not belonging to , true or supposed
”of the victims“
to a specific ethnicity, nation, race or religion
”.
The lawyer for the two victims, Me Arié Alimi, announced to AFP that a complaint had been filed with the constitution of a civil party on Wednesday asking to reclassify the investigation as "
attempted murder because of the victim's membership in a race or religion
”, a criminal qualification.
According to this complaint, the two victims are aged 19 and 40.
The first received three blows from a bladed weapon, the second six blows, including one puncturing the lung.
This second victim is still in the hospital.
According to this complaint, the two women say they were described as "
dirty Arabs
" by the two women involved, who also said to them: "
Go home
", "
You are not at home here
".
"
One of the women was also referring to the veil that several women in the family wore, talking about + that thing on your head
," according to this complaint.
