Allah's Willing Executioners

French authorities have ordered the expulsion of Russian journalist and former RT France director Xenia Fedorova, accusing her of acting as a conduit for Kremlin disinformation and threatening France’s public order.

The French interior ministry confirmed today that Fedorova had been served with a ministerial expulsion order, confirming a report by the daily Libération. The order states that her “behaviour undermines the fundamental interests of the State” and that her continued presence in France constitutes “a particularly serious and current threat to public order”.

Authorities accuse the 45-year-old of spreading Russian state narratives through her appearances on French television and radio, alleging she contributed to efforts “to manipulate public opinion”, weaken confidence in French and European institutions and destabilise public order.

Fedorova, who headed the French branch of Russian state broadcaster RT France from 2017, has since become a regular commentator on conservative broadcaster CNews, Europe 1 and weekly magazine JDNews.

The European Union suspended the broadcasting activities of RT and Sputnik on March 2, 2022 under Council Regulation 2022/350, adopted days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. RT France announced its closure in January 2023 after its French bank accounts were frozen, and was subsequently liquidated.

She also presents Lumières orthodoxes, a programme on Orthodox churches broadcast by CNews and CStar, both part of the Canal+ group. In March 2025 she published Bannie, subtitled La Liberté d’expression sous condition, with the Bolloré-owned publisher Fayard.

Her lawyer, Emmanuel Piwnica, condemned the expulsion notice as a serious attack on press freedom and announced that she would immediately appeal the expulsion order.

He told Agence France-Presse: “Xenia Fedorova is a journalist. This decision is a serious attack on the freedom of expression of a journalist who has always practised her profession in the most proper manner possible.”

Fedorova is already barred from German territory, a source close to the case told Agence France-Presse.

The French Government has increasingly targeted Fedorova over her media appearances in recent months.

On May 29, French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot described her as a “fully fledged propagandist” for the Kremlin, accusing broadcasters of helping spread Russian narratives by inviting her onto their programmes.

“Everyone is free to choose their editorial line, but giving this woman airtime and column inches is simply serving Vladimir Putin’s propaganda,” Barrot said on France Inter at the time.

The row followed an investigation published by Le Monde on May 26 that examined her influence within the media holdings of Vincent Bolloré, and a further report on June 1 questioning the ten-year residence permit she obtained in 2024 after RT France was wound up.

On May 13, Renew Europe president and French MEP Valérie Hayer called on France’s media regulator Arcom to investigate CNews and Europe 1 for repeatedly featuring Fedorova without prominently identifying her former role as head of RT France.

She claimed that allowing Fedorova to present views aligned with Moscow risked amplifying Kremlin narratives during wartime and could breach French broadcasting rules on accuracy and pluralism.

brusselssignal

On July 15th, Mario Roggero, a jeweller from Piedmont charged with fatally shooting two of the three robbers who had just raided his shop in 2021, received a final sentence of fourteen years and nine months in prison. This protracted legal battle has opened up a new political front in Italy and reignited a heated debate: to what extent does a citizen have the right to defend themselves when the state is no longer able to protect them?

With a new election cycle just a few months away, the case has become a powerful symbol for the Italian Right, which sees it as an illustration of a justice system more concerned with the rights of offenders than with those of victims. Conversely, the judiciary and the Left are defending the ruling as essential to upholding the rule of law, refusing to equate self-defence with a right to revenge.

The events date back to 28 April 2021. Three armed men entered Mario Roggero’s jewellery shop in Grinzane Cavour, Piedmont. The shopkeeper, his wife, and his daughter were threatened during the robbery. When the criminals fled, Roggero grabbed his legally owned gun, chased them down the street and fired several shots at their vehicle. Two robbers were killed; the third was seriously injured.

Whilst some members of the public viewed his actions as the reaction of a traumatised man who had just experienced a few minutes of extreme violence, the Italian courts reached a radically different conclusion. In the judges’ view, the immediate danger had ceased the moment the criminals fled. The legal requirements for self-defence were therefore no longer satisfied: the issue was no longer one of preventing an attack, but of retaliation. After several years of legal proceedings, the Court of Cassation upheld the conviction handed down on appeal on July 15, making the sentence final.

From a legal perspective, the case might seem relatively straightforward. Politically, however, it has become a casus belli.

Matteo Salvini immediately sided with the jeweller, describing the decision as “unfair” and calling for a further extension of the right to self-defence. The La Lega leader argues that a shopkeeper under armed attack cannot be expected, in the heat of the moment, to judge precisely when the danger has ceased. In his view, the state is sending a disastrous message to citizens: those who work honestly are at greater risk of going to prison than those who attack them.

But this time, support was not limited to La Lega. The entire governing coalition has taken up the cause. Giorgia Meloni herself has spoken out publicly to denounce what she considers a legal aberration: that a man who was attacked should be ordered to pay compensation to the families of the robbers he killed. The prime minister has expressed her support for amending the law to prevent a criminal—or their heirs—from obtaining compensation for injuries sustained whilst committing a crime. “The state is on the side of honest people, not criminals,” she declared.

This case is all the more sensitive given that the Italian Right had already made self-defence one of its key campaign issues. In 2019, under the first Conte government—in which Matteo Salvini was a minister—Parliament had relaxed the law to better protect individuals who were victims of break-ins at their homes or businesses. Supporters of this reform saw it as recognition of citizens’ right to defend their families when the police cannot intervene immediately.

The Roggero ruling shows, however, that these reforms have their limits. Judges continue to require that the danger be imminent and that the response remain strictly necessary and proportionate. Once the attacker flees, the protection afforded by self-defence should cease to apply. It is precisely this boundary that the right wing now wishes to push back. The motivation is not a reckless deregulation of the right to revenge, but a shift in paradigm: the rights of victims must take precedence over those of offenders.

Beyond criminal law, the case reveals a much deeper divide within Italian society, in a country where the mafia’s stranglehold, for decades, has long highlighted the existence of a justice system running parallel to that of the state. The controversy pits two conceptions of the state against one another. On the Left, the view is that only the institutions’ monopoly on legitimate violence can guarantee civil peace; allowing victims to take the law into their own hands would pave the way for a dangerous escalation. From the government coalition’s perspective, this analysis is outdated. Faced with an explosion of violence, a state incapable of effectively ensuring security is gradually losing its legitimacy to prevent citizens from protecting themselves.

This issue extends far beyond Italy’s borders. In several European countries, the rise in violent assaults, burglaries, and attacks on shopkeepers is fuelling a sense of insecurity that is giving rise to similar demands. In France, a jeweller in Nice was caught up in a similar incident after being held up by two men. One of them, aged 19, fled on a scooter. The shopkeeper, having come out of his shop, shot him in the back. A CCTV video showing the sequence of events quickly went viral in the media and sparked a huge wave of support for the jeweller. A petition in his support gathered over a million signatures in just a few days, with backing from Nicolas Sarkozy, Marine Le Pen, and a large section of the French Right. In 2018, the jeweller was given a five-year suspended prison sentence for “assault resulting in death without intent to kill.”

The difference is that in the Italian case, Roggero received a heavy custodial sentence. However, the case carries particular significance because it comes against a backdrop of growing confrontation between the Meloni government and part of the judiciary. Since coming to power, the right-wing coalition has regularly accused certain judges of obstructing its policies, whether on immigration, security, or institutional reforms. The jeweller’s conviction now forms part of this political narrative, in which the justice system is portrayed as out of touch with public sentiment and the concerns of ordinary citizens.

The case has also become a powerful tool for mobilisation. Petitions, calls for a presidential pardon, social media campaigns: Mario Roggero is now portrayed by his supporters as the face of a hard-working Italy that the state has allegedly abandoned.

Roggero’s wife has submitted a request for a pardon to President Sergio Mattarella. Meanwhile, he could be released thanks to an appeal to the Court of Cassation on the grounds of procedural irregularity.

europeanconservative

The French government has revealed that an estimated ninety per cent of so-called wildfires are the result of human activity, undermining the persistent media narrative that climate change is driving spontaneous fires ravaging the countryside.

On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that 184 people have been arrested in connection with wildfires since the beginning of the summer. Those arrested are a combination of arsonists, criminals, and careless individuals, he said.

According to the French Forest Observatory, around one in three (30 per cent) of wildfires are believed to have been set maliciously, Le Figaro reported.

In total, the Ministry of the Interior estimated that nine in ten wildfires in France were started by humans. The Place Beauvau said that since June, five people have been imprisoned and a further 15 have been placed in detention pending a trial.

A conviction for starting a fire can come with serious consequences, particularly if the fire resulted in deaths. Following a strengthening of the laws surrounding the issue in 2004 in the wake of a deadly heatwave.

People found to have been negligent can face up to two years in prison, while those who deliberately set fires face up to ten years in prison, though a life sentence is possible if the fires kill.

The wildfires in France have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, with over 115,000 hectares of forest destroyed by the flames.

Yet, rather than addressing the persistent issue of arson and negligent accidents, the Western legacy media has heavily focussed on climate change driving blazes, with direct human action downplayed.

This is despite European governments having long recognised that so-called wildfires across the continent are typically the result of human activity.

Indeed, during the summer of 2023, when Greece faced hundreds of fires, Athens’ Climate Change Minister Vassilis Kikilias acknowledged that the majority of the fires “were caused by human hand” and that the people behind them were guilty of “arson either by criminal negligence or by intention”.

That same summer, the regional president of the Spanish Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, admitted that wildfires that forced over thousands of tourists to evacuate had been a result of arson.

In response to the prevalence of pyromaniacs, some governments have been forced to get creative with their attempts to stop arson, including the use of police drones in Italy to patrol the countryside for prospective arsonists.

breitbart

After more than a decade of permitting trans-identifying males to be put in women’s facilities, police forces across the UK are reversing their policies in the wake of the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling that “woman” in the UK Equality Act refers to biological sex.

The women’s rights group Sex Matters has been monitoring the policies of various police forces and sending legal letters to the laggers; in response, the British Transport Police, Merseyside Police, Northumbria Police, Surrey Police, Sussex Police, and Metropolitan Police have fallen into line. Last month, the Court of Session also ruled that the Scottish Prison Service must house trans-identifying males in male prisons.

But according to a July 26 report in the Telegraph, the Staffordshire Police are holding out. According to the force, “detainees may be placed in accommodation consistent with their gender identity,” meaning that trans-identifying men can still be placed in “women’s-only custody cells” in direct violation of last year’s Supreme Court ruling. According to the Telegraph, the “revised” policies of Staffordshire Police allow “a person to self-identify with their chosen gender” and has “been accused of providing ‘contradictory’ guidance on whether an officer of the opposite sex can carry out strip searches.”

In fact, the Staffordshire Police policies emphasize an “explicit policy commitment to self-identification” and that “where recognised, detainees may be placed in accommodation consistent with their gender identity.” The policy notes that this is essential because “risk of inappropriate placement (e.g. housing a trans woman in male custody)” will create “safety risks including assault, bullying, or harassment.”

When contacted by the Telegraph, Staffordshire Police insisted that their policies were compliant with the law because risk to prisoners was mitigated by placement in separate cells and strip-searches are decided on a case-by-case basis, but Cathy Larkman of the Women’s Rights Network disagreed. “These policies do not comply with the Supreme Court judgment, and they indicate a level of ignorance with the law and a disregard for the rights of women that is deeply concerning,” she said. 

Of course, if prisoners are placed in separate cells, this presumably eliminates the risk of “assault, bullying, or harassment.” The Staffordshire Police policies additionally emphasize that staff must “uphold inclusive language” and engage in “‘respectful’ pronoun use,” the Telegraph noted. In short, staff will be required to verbally affirm what the Supreme Court rejected: that a trans-identifying man is a woman. 

Currently, Sex Matters is challenging similarly ambiguous guidelines from the National Police Chiefs’ Council that permits a trans-identifying person to “request a search by an officer of the opposite biological sex,” which the group states “will lead to discrimination and harassment of female officers.”

“It is unforgivable that Staffordshire Police still fails to reflect fully the For Women Scotland Supreme Court judgment and the clear same-sex requirement in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act,” Terence Stock, a former member of the police force’s Independent Advisory Group, told the Telegraph. 

“Intimate searches are among the most intrusive powers imaginable, and disproportionately affect women with histories of trauma and sexual violence. Police forces must follow the law, protect those in custody, and treat sex as the biological reality it is – not continue to make concessions that put women at risk.”

The women’s rights groups in the UK are laying out a playbook that social conservatives should learn from. They saw the Supreme Court ruling as the beginning of their battle, not the conclusion. Since then, they have won a string of follow-up legal victories to purge institutions of transgender policies, from hospitals to police services to the prison system. When attacked by major NGOs such as Amnesty International UK, they have punched back—twice as hard. They have remained perpetually on the offensive, and their counter-campaign has been more effective than I would have thought possible.

lifesitenews

“Just one week before the killing, Maren Sømme was hospitalised after ‘falling’ at home.”

When a society fails to protect its women and children from foreign invaders, it’s committing national suicide. Over and over again, Muslim migrants have committed acts of violence against women in Europe and have been allowed to remain in these countries.

Here’s a recent horrifying case out of Norway in which Maren Sømme, 30 years old, was allegedly murdered by her Afghan boyfriend.

Bayan arrived in Norway in 2004/2005 with his mother and two siblings. His father followed later. At the time of his previous conviction, 2018, he was still an Afghan citizen on a temporary residence permit.

Just one week before the killing, Maren Sømme was hospitalised after “falling” at home and suffering head injuries. From her hospital bed she reported Bayan for the violence she had endured.

Despite his long and brutal record, the support system and police refused to protect her. She withdrew the complaint, and was sent straight back to her abuser.

Days later she was found with catastrophic injuries in their home in Nærbø on Jæren. She died from those injuries and Bayan has been charged with her murder.

The official media story states that…

The man in his 30s who has now been charged with murder has previously been convicted of multiple counts of violence, and was expelled from the country.

In 2017, he was sentenced to prison for one year and eight months of violence against his ex-wife. However, he was acquitted in the Court of Appeal.

In 2020, the accused received a restraining order against his ex-wife, her new cohabitant and their joint child.

In 2019, he was sentenced to prison for one year and two months. Among other things, for repeated relationships of violence against another former girlfriend. It was this ruling that made him eventually expelled from the country.

But the Immigration Board and the Norwegian authorities have for a long time had temporary halts in forced returns to the country the man originally comes from.

The country being Afghanistan. So instead of deporting him, the Afghan stayed behind and took a Norwegian woman’s life.

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An “attention-seeking” illegal migrant has been jailed after turning up at a school armed with a hammer, hatchet and kitchen knife.

South Sudanese national Both Douk Deng, 21, had become “increasingly frustrated” that immigration authorities were not helping him stay in Britain.

Deng, who has a wife and child, was arrested after workmen confronted the South Sudanese at Edgar Wood Academy in Heywood, Greater Manchester, on August 6 last year.

He was seen “mumbling” as he walked a “full circuit” around the school with a hammer, hatcher, seven-inch kitchen knife, and jerry can containing half a litre of petrol, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

A day earlier he had been seen spotted “acting oddly” at the Holy Family RC and CE College in Rochdale.

There, he kicked and damaged its intercom – though both schools had already closed for the summer.

Sara Haque, defending, said he maintained he did not have any desire to injure or hurt anyone, and there was no evidence he threatened any individual.

She said: “This was a bizarre and compulsive act lacking in any type of maturity at a time when he was in deep distress having left Sudan and his family in traumatic circumstances.

“He wanted attention and he was in crisis but he was not motivated by hostility towards children, teachers or the wider public.”

Deng was placed in a house in multiple occupation (HMO) upon his arrival in the UK, the court was told.

Ms Haque said he had “very limited English” and felt frustrated that “no-one was listening to him and no-one was helping him”.

“He felt he had reached the limit of his ability to cope within the HMO where others in similar circumstances to him had been assisted by the immigration authorities,” she added.

“He became increasingly frustrated that the same was not happening for him.

“His only wish is to work and find money to support his family.”

Deng had no major mental health issues, according to psychiatric reports.

He has now been sentenced to two years behind bars, after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to a range of offences including criminal damage and possessing weapons and a knife in a public place and on school premises.

The South Sudanese national will serve half his sentence in custody and the remainder on licence.

Judge Bernadette Baxter told him: “I have no power to order the Home Office to do anything.

“But in my judgment, given your circumstances as a failed asylum seeker who has been in custody for the best part of a year, the Home Office should be doing something rather than nothing to deal with your status in this country.”

Greater Manchester Police’s Chief Superintendent Helen Caldbeck, district commander for Rochdale, said: “I’m incredibly proud of the officers’ response to this incident.

“They were professional and brave in tackling a suspicious man armed with weapons and immediately confronted Deng to keep the public safe.

“Thankfully no one was close to coming to harm but this was nevertheless a disturbing incident.”

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We (should) all know about the destruction of the library of Alexandria, a series of events that robbed mankind of priceless ancient texts, containing wisdoms, tales, and untold amounts of information about antiquity. Bits of knowledge that truly (and literally) were lost forever to the ashheap of history.

And, we’re witnessing a 2026 version of the tragedy: AI companies are buying up rare and out-of-print books—many with no other surviving copies—reportedly as part of an effort to train their AI models. These corporations are then shredding the original copies, because it’s *slightly* cheaper than storing the books.

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're… pic.twitter.com/0YPd8N2oi5

— Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) July 27, 2026

Prominent journalist Sydney J. Harris once noted that “History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” For years, I held that sentiment to be true, but upon further ponderance, I realized he could have only been speaking to the uneducated and uninformed leftist masses, because in no way did that observation apply to the average person with any grasp of history (as elementary as it may be), who, by virtue of being at least somewhat enlightened, is not politically left.

When we see a government accomplish gun control and consequently ramp up the oppression, it’s not some “cunning” or “disguised” bait-and-switch. The tyranny that comes after rendering the citizenry defenseless is entirely predictable.

When a society rejects the morality of the Christian faith—in our case a worldview that became the pillars of the Western nations—the invasion of immorality in the public sphere is not a “cunning” or “disguised” leftist scheme. Rome did exactly that, a mistake we seem determined to replicate.

When barbarians from the darkest corners of the world flood into a civilized  Western (Christian) culture, whether they’re the Islamic hordes of Mehmed II or the sub-Saharan migrants of today, the chaos and dysfunction ushered in are not results of some “cunning” or “disguised” political campaign.

This is all a + b = c.

And, the disappearance of books time and again, whether it’s a byproduct of war and political turmoil (as in the case of Alexandria), a byproduct of corporate profit—the benefit-of-the-doubt plausible-deniability excuse I’ll give the AI companies, though I also suspect it’s intentional censorship—or outright censorship, is also not some “cunning” or “disguised” repetition history. It’s a key part of erasing a people and eradicating a culture.

Joseph Stalin’s regime destroyed millions of books. Government agencies like Glavlit, along with secret police and library commissions, routinely purged public and private libraries, wiping out works considered counter-revolutionary, religious, or bourgeois; Stalin’s cronies also slaughtered countless intellectuals during his reign of Great Terror.

Pol Pot seemingly took it a step further, overseeing the destruction of nearly “all written works, libraries, and formal education.” Intellectualism became a capital offense, and the radical push to reset Cambodia to “Year Zero” saw roughly 80% of Khmer literature erased.

Mao wasn’t much different.

Ironically, we see the theme of destroying/preserving books/knowledge commonly in fiction too, even appearing in some of literature’s greatest works.

In 1984, main character Winston plays a huge role in erasing history, tossing things down the Memory Hole; he then reads a “forbidden” text from the alleged resistance leader, Emmanuel Goldstein.

In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag does an about-face, and instead of burning books, he risks his life to preserve the knowledge they contain.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the new government, the Republic of Gilead, purges the libraries and bans the people from reading.

In fact, the fantasy series I’m currently reading happens to include the theme, with the “Great Library of Parthos” being moved and hidden once its location becomes known to the world’s tyrannical overlords.

You see, destroying books to erase history—a history that keeps on repeating—to subject a people is nothing new. Though, in contradiction to Harris’s opinion, the manner in which it’s being repeated now is not cunning or disguised.  Yes, I believe the AI companies ripping our books to shreds are mostly motivated by profit, but they’re also not friends of humanity, or in the business of promoting informed people, so I can’t help but deduce it’s a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone effort.

americanthinker

A survey in Spain found six out of ten Spaniards hold a negative opinion of Spain’s current legislative term and socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government, with as many as a third strongly condemning the legislature as “disastrous,” “nefarious,” and “ruinous.”

Spain will hold new elections next year, expected to occur no later than August 22, 2027. Although the Spanish conservative People’s Party obtained the most amount of seats in the August 2023 elections, Sánchez and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) managed to cling to power by securing alliances with minority leftist parties — allowing PSOE to secure enough votes for Sánchez’s current four year term.

PSOE and the Sánchez administration, however, find themselves navigating through an extremely complex moment as the last year of the current parliamentary term approaches. The Spanish socialists have been rocked by several corruption scandals and widespread rejection — most notably, with regards to the widely revile mass amnesty plan that saw some 1.2 million illegal migrants apply to receive “legal” status in Spain and all the benefits that it entails.

Spanish market research firm Sigma Dos held a survey for the newspaper El Mundo published on Monday whose results mark a scathing condemnation of the current socialist government. According to the study, 60 percent of Spaniards hold some form of negative opinion of the current Spanish legislature, against a minority 12 percent who finds it “good, positive, and competent.”

Out of the 60 percent majority, a group of 30.3 percent of respondents finds it “disastrous,” “nefarious,” and “ruinous.”

Furthermore, 31 percent of respondents said that they do not recognize any achievement attributable to the current Spanish government.

Other, equally condemning opinions, such as “deceitful,” “fraudulent,” “chaotic,” “unstable,” “confusing,” and “disappointing,” were reportedly  espoused by the survey’s respondents.

In light of the rejection of the Spanish socialist government and the current state of the nation’s politics, as many as 41 percent believe that next year’s elections will be brought forward to anywhere during the first trimester of 2027.

El Mundo explained that the survey asked participants on their opinion on a list of decisions taken by the current legislature. Unsurprisingly, 53.6 percent of respondents expressed a negative opinion of the mass amnesty for illegal migrants.

On the subject of increasing NATO member Spain’s military spending — a point of contention for Prime Minister Sánchez  — 48.4 percent reportedly expressed to support the increase against 42,2 who stand against it. 9.3 percent preferred not to answer that specific question, El Mundo pointed out.

The results published by El Mundo on Monday are part of a broader survey conducted by Sigma Dos for the Spanish newspaper. According to El Mundo, PSOE finds itself at its least favorable scenario, and are projected to lose about 17 seats in the upcoming election — a scenario that would leave the Spanish left short from being able to form a new coalition government like in 2023.

In contrast, the scenario presented by Sigma Dos suggests that the People’s Party  and the Spanish populist party Vox would obtain notable parliamentary gains in next year’s elections and a comfortable margin that can lead to a prospective coalition government between both right-wing parties.

breitbart

In the heart of Paris, a man attacked three women with a knife “in the name of Allah.” Yet, once again, the psychiatric diagnosis prevailed, and the case was not referred to the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office. Across the French border, an Islamist terrorist attacked the Berlin Pride parade, but there, too, it seems almost impossible for the Germans to accurately profile the attacker. Is deliberate blindness the disease of our time?

On Monday, July 27th, 2026, in Paris’s 17th arrondissement, three young women, aged 19, 24, and 36, one of them pregnant, were attacked with a knife in the middle of the street late in the morning. Two victims were seriously injured, but, according to authorities, their lives are not in danger.

The alleged perpetrator, a 31-year-old man, was armed with two kitchen knives. He was spotted and followed by an off-duty police officer from the Paris Police Prefecture, then subdued with the help of responding officers and several bystanders before being arrested.

Several witnesses and videos shared on social media show the suspect stating, among other things: “It was Allah who ordered me to do this.” According to other accounts reported by the press, he also reportedly stated: “Allah sent me to kill women.”

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office was immediately notified and is monitoring the case but has not taken over the investigation at this stage. An investigation has been opened for aggravated attempted murder, while authorities are working to determine whether the acts constitute a terrorist offense or were motivated by other factors. 

Police Prefect Laurent Nuñez stated that the suspect was speaking incoherently and had reportedly been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment on several previous occasions. The psychiatric interpretation is currently favoured by the authorities, in line with a recurring pattern in cases of this type: psychological motivation is emphasized, which allows the ideological background of the attack to be downplayed when the suspect is Muslim.

At this time, several points remain to be established. Were the victims chosen at random or because they were women? What were the attacker’s potential ties to Islamist circles? Depending on the findings of the investigation, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office will decide whether or not to proceed with the investigation on the basis of a terrorism charge.

The tendency to frame attacks linked to Islam as psychiatric cases seems to be a standard procedure for police and judicial authorities. It is worth noting that when investigations are conducted into attacks carried out by individuals with profiles associated with the ‘far right,’ psychological instability is never highlighted as a primary factor in the media. Who remembers Anders Breivik as a paranoid schizophrenic? It is understandable that it may be delicate to classify acts that combine explicit references to Islam, extreme violence, and psychiatric disorders, but the presumption of psychiatric causes occurs too frequently to go unquestioned.

The French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office follows a fairly consistent approach. In their view, the fact that a perpetrator shouts “Allahu Akbar,” claims to be acting “in the name of Allah,” or cites a religious motive is not sufficient on its own to characterize the act as terrorism. Prosecutors look for objective evidence demonstrating genuine ideological commitment: viewing jihadist propaganda, allegiance to an organization, preparation for the attack, documented radicalization, a symbolic choice of target, or an intent to sow terror beyond the immediate victims. In the absence of such evidence, the case is generally handled by the ordinary criminal prosecutor’s office, even if the perpetrator’s statements have Islamist overtones.

The Alban Gervaise case remains, in this regard, one of the most significant precedents.

On May 10, 2022, the 40-year-old military doctor was stabbed to death outside the Catholic school where he had come to pick up his three children in Marseille. His attacker chased him out of his vehicle, struck him repeatedly, and, once subdued, shouted, among other things, “Let me finish him off, in the name of God,” and referred to his victim as “the devil.” The circumstances—a family man, a Catholic school, explicit religious references—immediately raised questions about a possible Islamist attack.

However, the judges concluded that the perpetrator was suffering from an acute delusional episode, likely linked to early-stage schizophrenia, which had resulted in a loss of discernment at the time of the incident. In 2025, he was therefore declared not criminally responsible and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. In 2026, the decision to grant him a more flexible treatment regimen, including periods at home, caused a strong public outcry, particularly among the victim’s family.

In an earlier case, in 2017, the murder of Sarah Halimi by Kobili Traoré—who committed the murder after reciting suras from the Quran and shouting “Allah Akbar”—was recognized as having been committed while he was suffering from an acute delusional episode, exacerbated by heavy cannabis use. Although the judges accepted the antisemitic motive, the perpetrator was found not criminally responsible.

The Paris attack presents several interesting features: a perpetrator who claims to be acting on Allah’s orders, victims apparently chosen at random, and reports of a history of psychiatric illness. It is to be hoped that the assailant will not, once again, be able to escape justice.

The existence of psychiatric disorders does not automatically preclude a terrorist classification. But it does provide a convenient legal loophole. Above all, there does not seem to be any middle ground between a terrorist act and severe psychiatric disorders leading to criminal irresponsibility. Yet the prevalence of psychologically unstable individuals within a population of immigrant origin with an Islamic background goes beyond mere anecdotal evidence, yet the authorities are reluctant to draw political or practical conclusions from it.

The presumption of psychiatric issues whenever a lone attacker of Muslim background carries out a violent act is merely one element in a broader institutional blindness to the risk posed to Western societies by the massive influx of immigrants from Muslim societies. With the media and politicians obsessed with welcoming and being open to others, the terrorist threat is underestimated, and the underlying violence within these immigrant populations is consistently swept under the rug as a non-issue. Ten years ago, on Sunday, July 26th, 2016, Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit while celebrating Mass in the small town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. Today, we remember his death—but public television struggles to acknowledge that he was a victim of Islamic terrorism. Self-imposed blindness is hard to cure.

europeanconservative

Documents on a planned inquiry into the interior minister were taken from the Chega leader’s room at the Assembly of the Republic, the party says.

Intruders have broken into the office of Chega leader André Ventura at Portugal’s Assembly of the Republic, ransacking the room and removing documents, the party has said.

Ventura published a video on X showing papers and personal items strewn across the floor and cabinets left open. “We have reached the zero point of our democracy,” he wrote.

A Chega MP raised the alarm at about 6.30am on July 28, according to an official party source. Neither the adjoining group room nor the party’s other office appeared to have been disturbed.

Speaking to reporters at parliament, Ventura said two sets of documents had gone missing along with two USB drives and some personal belongings.

One set concerned the parliamentary inquiry into Luís Neves that Chega intends to force through in September. The other contained political material relating to the office of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and was more than a year old.

Ventura linked the break-in to remarks he made on July 24, when he told journalists he held relevant documents on the current interior minister. He described the episode as an act of intimidation and denied it had been staged.

The Judicial Police (PJ) confirmed to Lusa that its National Counter-Terrorism Unit had taken over the case and was carrying out checks at the parliament in Lisbon.

Chega announced on July 24 that it would force an inquiry into Neves’s tenure as national director of the PJ between 2018 and 2026. With 60 seats the party exceeds the 46 signatures required under Portuguese law to compel one.

Neves, an independent, was sworn in as interior minister in February 2026 after the resignation of Maria Lúcia Amaral. He has faced questions over building work at a property he owns in Odemira, southern Portugal, carried out by a firm that had previously won contracts from the PJ.

He has also been asked about a trailer seized in a drug-trafficking case that was later found at the same company’s premises. The minister has denied wrongdoing and said he was available to answer questions in parliament.

The PJ reports to the justice ministry rather than to the ministry Neves now runs. He led the unit now handling the case earlier in his police career.

Montenegro said the break-in was inconceivable in a democracy and called for an investigation that was “swift and conclusive”, given that it took place inside a sovereign body.

Parliament speaker José Pedro Aguiar-Branco was following the case with parliamentary services, his office said, adding that establishing the facts was a matter for the PJ.

Chega became Portugal’s main opposition party at the May 2025 general election. Ventura reached the presidential run-off in January before losing to Socialist António José Seguro in February.

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