Known to the police for acts of violence, the attacker had just been denied his refugee status. He had already been in prison in France.
It was a terrible tragedy that took place at the Reception Centre for Asylum Seekers (CADA) in Pau, the capital of the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. At the end of the morning, on Friday, February 19, a migrant from the Isard COS reception centre in the city attacked an official of the centre with a knife, reported BFMTV. The 46-year-old father died soon after.
The motivation of the assailant, a 38-year-old Sudanese man, remains unknown for the time being. He was arrested in the wake of the murder and taken into police custody.
According to the television channel, he had just been refused his refugee status by Ofpra. He was known to the police for acts of violence and has already been in prison. In 2017, he was convicted twice for acts of violence with a weapon. “He even had problems during his detention. There was no criminal follow-up and we have come to this tragedy,” the departmental secretary of the Alliance national police union of the Pyrenees-Atlantiques Daniel Domengé told the broadcaster.
“The director wanted to receive him and unfortunately this individual attacked him and stabbed him several times, resulting in the death of this poor man who was only doing his job,” Domengé added. Arriving on the spot, the police discovered the victim “lying on the ground in his office and presenting wounds which can be likened to blows given with a knife […] mainly on the thorax,” the public prosecutor of Pau said, detailing the gruesome scene.
On Twitter, the Minister of the Interior sent his “most sincere condolences to the family of the victim and his relatives,” and announced that he would go to Pau “at the end of the afternoon to meet the staff of the association as well as elected officials”. According to information from BFMTV, an investigation was opened by the Pau prosecutor’s office and entrusted to departmental security.
A “stereotypical story”? This is the term used by a magistrate to explain why the father of the “decapitator” of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was first refused refugee status by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra), on November 19, 2010, before the National Court of Asylum (CNDA) granted him, on appeal, this international protection, on March 25, 2011. The perpetrator was able to benefit from the refugee status of his father and automatically obtained a ten-year residence permit, in March last year, when he came of age. Abdulakh Anzorov was born in Moscow on March 12, 2002, French daily Le Figaro reported, citing a similar case, describing the killer of Samuel Paty.
In front of the press, the Minister of the Interior indicated late Friday afternoon that the suspect was “a Sudanese refugee” who had arrived in 2015 on the national territory. “OFPRA had initially refused his asylum request and the CNDA, the administrative justice, had authorized his presence on the national territory.”