Following a knife attack that took place in Marseille, France, by a Tunisian national living in France, the Mayor Benoît Payan denounced what he called the “obsession” with immigration.
Five people including a hotel manager and the manager’s son were stabbed at a hotel in Marseille on September 2. One was in critical condition, the city’s prosecutor said.
The Tunisian attacker, who had two knives and a crowbar, died after being shot by police, prosecutor Nicolas Bessone said.
After the stabbings, Payan argued on national television that this type of attack was also committed by people who were born in France.
“I want people to be treated the same way. And if that person hadn’t died tonight, they would probably have been arrested and sent back to their country of origin,” he said.
“The issue is not immigration,” he insisted, adding that the priority should be “how the person who is between life and death is doing, how the hospitalised people and the police officers are doing.
“Why can’t we have a normal discussion without the issue of immigration being an obsession?” Payant asked.
According to the declaration by Bessone, the Tunisian national, named Abdelkader Dhibi, was legally residing in France and was staying at a hotel in the Belsuncer district in the city centre.
He was evicted earlier on September 2 from the hotel for not paying his bill.
After that, he returned to the hotel, went to the room he had been occupying and stabbed a roommate who was staying there. That person has been hospitalised in critical condition.
On the ground floor, Dhibi stabbed the hotel manager and the manager’s son in the back before continuing his “criminal spree in the neighbourhood”, according to Bessone.
Video footage of the event showed bystanders trying to stop Dhibi’s attack by throwing objects at him.
A resident who saw the incident told AFP the suspect tried to stab officers as they moved to arrest him.
Another eyewitness said Dhibi was holding “two large butcher knives”.
While the left-wing Socialist Mayor Payan refused to link the attack to the issue of migration, the right-wing French interior Minister Bruno Retailleau took a different stance.
Upon arriving at the scene, he insisted that France “must regain control of migration flows”.
“We must be very careful about those we welcome onto the territory,” he added.
Following the stabbings, Martine Vassal, the President of Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, revealed that “for several weeks” there were official “alerts on the chaotic situation in the city centre”.
