RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is a new, wonderful French cultural custom – to randomly attack and stab people to death in the street.

And the latest person to partake in this charming form of multicultural enrichment was an unidentified young Afghan who, armed with a knife and a barbecue spit, randomly attacked people at a bus stop in the city of Villeurbanne in the Lyon metropolitan area, killing one and wounding eight.

“There was a lot of blood. It was not a small cut,” said Nina, a witness, to Le Figaro newspaper. “There was a man wounded with three young children. He had blood on his face and on his tee-shirt.”

The person killed was a young, nineteen-year-old Frhenchman, Timothy Bonnet, whose love of music had brought him to Villeurbanne by chance that day to attend a music festival.

A witness said Timothy was among the first who tried to reason with the Afghan. He said the killer “stabbed him and when he fell to the ground, he continued (to stab him)”

Another witness reported Bonnet then “had trouble breathing.”

The killer also wounded a woman who likewise fell to the ground, whom a passerby covered with her body to protect her. And still another witness told Agence France Press that “A man at the 57 (bus) stop started stabbing people left, right and center.”

One can only imagine the terror and horror of those present.

After his attack at the bus stop, the killer ran to a subway station where he wounded still another person. At the subway, four bus drivers and other passersby “isolated” the killer, persuading him to drop his weapons. One was a knife with an 8 cm. blade. Police later found a knife with a 20 cm. blade under a vehicle that also belonged to the killer.

“His face was expressionless,” a bus driver said. “You felt he was stabbing away just for the sake of it.”

When arrested, the killer, who had a short, well-trimmed beard and wore a hood and red sneakers with a stripe, possessed two different identifications and three different dates of birth showing he was 33, 31 and 27. He is believed to be about 30.

The Afghan told police in his initial statements, which were described as partially “confused and incoherent,” that he was a Muslim “who had heard voices God had been insulted and instructing him to kill.” He had consumed “a considerable amount” of cannabis before the attack but acknowledged killing Timothy Bonnet.

He said he killed the young Frenchman because he thought he recognized him as someone he had had a run-in with in England several years earlier.

The Afghan was not known to the intelligence services and had no police record. Police are treating the case as a criminal and not a terrorist matter, since there were no signs of radicalization. He is charged with murder and attempted murder.

Police also believe psychological problems are involved, which authorities often invoke after Islamic terrorist attacks. The case has been placed with “psychiatric profiles.”

The Russian/Israeli writer Alexander Maistrovoy cites authorities’ use of the “psychological problems” alibi as one of the evasion methods those in power use to avoid having to confront the fact terrorist attacks by Muslims have something to do with Islam.

On the other hand, one must question why Buddhists, Hindus and Christians with psychological problems never seem to stab and kill people randomly in terrorist attacks.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist National Rally Party, strongly criticized French immigration policy after the Villeurbanne attack. She correctly stated “the laxity of the immigration policy” was a “serious threat to the security of the French people.”

Le Pen’s words brought the usual counter reaction from the left.  The socialist mayor of Villeurbanne, Jean-Paul Bret, called her words “disgraceful.”

“It is the classic reaction of the extreme right, which tries to use a dramatic event for its profit,” said Bret. “There is little glory for those who use these words…”

Bret further stated: “This terrible event cannot be confused with migration politics….”

But despite what the mayor says, there are serious questions concerning the Afghan killer’s immigration status in France that are being asked.

The Afghan was staying in France on a “temporary residence permit” that was to be renewed next January 31. Critics want to know how he got this permit when his identity wasn’t known for sure. And what were his activities when he was known under two different identities? And why was he still staying in an asylum-seeker hostel when he had a temporary residence permit?

The Afghan had arrived in Europe as a minor in 2009 and made a long trip through the continent, staying in Italy, Norway and Germany before “running aground” in France in 2016. But a Le Figaro story states “elements of his journey remain obscure.”

Although the Afghan could not prove any credible threat against him in his country of origin, French immigration authorities deemed the security situation in Afghanistan too dangerous and allowed him to stay.

“The man was able de facto to kill and wound in France because France judged that he risked being killed or wounded in Afghanistan,” stated a Le Figaro story ironically.

The true victim in this terrible tragedy, young Timothy Bonnet, deserves not to be forgotten. His friends described him as “playful and warm.” He had just graduated from high school in 2017 with a diploma as pastry chef and was working for a local catering company where, a friend said, “he worked hard” and “was determined to succeed in his career.”

“He loved music enormously, reggae in particular, but equally the pastry shop,” stated one friend. “He likewise loved animals.”

Besides going to music festivals, Timothy loved poetry. A local newspaper reported he had won a prize in 2016 for a poem written with two other students that included a pastry recipe.

“Timothy was a merry-maker,” said his friend Florent. “A bon vivant, it’s the term that characterizes him best…He wanted to travel, discover the world, to crunch life between his teeth. To make the most of it, to enjoy it. One could count on him 100 per cent…I am truly under shock and devastated. He will always be in our hearts. He will not be forgotten.”

Timothy’s last words before he died also deserve to be recorded. Witnesses say they were “19, 73, festival.” “Nineteen” was his age, “73” represents his native region, Savoy (it’s the department number), and “festival” for the Villeurbanne music festival he was to attend.

Tragically, Timothy joins a growing list of young French men and women who have had their promising lives terminated before they had ever really begun by knife-wielding Muslims.                                                                                             .

Among these are two female cousins whose beautiful young lives were snuffed out in Marseille in 2017 by an illegal immigrant from Tunisia. He approached the two young women, aged 20 and 21, from behind at a train station and slit the throat of one and stabbed the other in the stomach.

The one cousin was a medical student while the other was studying nursing. The Tunisian had been picked up the day before the murders by police for shoplifting. A stark contrast in lives.

Another young French life extinguished by a Muslim terrorist was that of Ronan Gnoset, 29, an information engineer. He was killed during a knifing spree in Paris’s opera quarter in 2018 by a Chechen. Four others were wounded. The Chechen had been carded by French intelligence as possibly dangerous. A neighbor described Ronan as “the son that everyone wishes to have one day. Kind, polite, helpful, devoted and a good friend with everyone.”

It is horrifying incidences such as these which make France a bleeding country that will, in all likelihood and partly due to migration politics, continue to bleed its young people’s lives.