Residents react during a gathering being held in a central square of the eastern French city of Strasbourg to pay homage to the victims of a gunman. Photos / AP
Residents react during a gathering being held in a central square of the eastern French city of Strasbourg to pay homage to the victims of a gunman. Photos / AP
Residents of Strasbourg filled a square in the French city to show respect and sympathy for the people killed and the dozen wounded during a shooting attack near a famous Christmas market.
According to local newspaper DNA, more than 1000 people attended the memorial, which ended with a minute of applause and a rendition of France's national anthem, La Marseillaise.
The hour-long ceremony took place in Kleber Square, not far from where a gunman opened fire last Wednesday. Yesterday the death toll rose to five as another victim died from their wounds.
Strasbourg Mayor Roland Ries praised the city's resilience in the face of hardship.
The "extremely large crowd in the Christmas market" yesterday "was an illustration of our commitment to these values on which our living together is based, which we will continue to defend against all those who want to attack it," Ries said.
A massive manhunt for the gunman ended on Friday when the main suspect, Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt, 29, was killed in a shootout with police in the city neighbourhood where he grew up.
The attack remains under investigation. The Paris prosecutor's office said two people who were close Chekatt were released from custody today "in the absence of incriminating elements at this stage."
Only one of the seven people authorities detained while searching for Chekatt was still being held.
Chekatt's parents and two of his brothers, who were held for questioning for several days, were released yesterday.
People once against in the streets as Strasbourg's Christmas market reopens.
A nondescript, low-rise housing estate in a western suburb, was home for Chekatt.
Toufik Elkiri, 33, a taxi driver whose colleague had been held hostage by the gunman, said: "He was a thug who smoked too much pot, but there was nothing religious about him. I'm tired of people tarring us all with the same brush."
Another resident called Zak, 22, chimed in: "There is church 50 yards away, a mosque over there, there are Jews. The priest is a friend of the Imam, sometimes they have meals together. We live in harmony here."
Yet the statistics point to a different story suggesting Strasbourg has a serious problem with radicalisation.
Ries, earlier in the year, lifted the lid on the scale of the issue, estimating that 10 per cent of France's 25,000-strong "S" security watch list - which includes 9,700 potential radicals - lived in the area. That makes 2500 possible threats.
However arguable the figures, Ghislain Benhessa, a lawyer specialising in terrorism, said: "In Strasbourg and the Bas-Rhin, there is a nest of radicalised people that doesn't necessarily exist elsewhere".
Strasbourg is one of France's top jihadist hotbeds, according to Jean-Charles Brisard, head of the terrorism analysis centre.
Police watch as shoppers return to the market in Strasbourg, France.
"Several hundred" individuals from the area are on the FSPRT terror and radicalisation watch list, he said, and the city has dismantled "several jihadist networks".
The city burst onto the Islamist map in 2000 after a foiled al-Qaeda truck bomb plot to blow up Strasbourg cathedral. Since then, a string of youths have fallen into the Islamist trap.
In 2012, Jérémie Louis-Sidney, one of the masterminds of a grenade attack against a kosher store in Sarcelles, outside Paris, was shot dead in a raid on his student lodgings in Strasbourg.
One of the suicide bombers that wreaked carnage at the Bataclan in 2015, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, came from Wissembourg in the Strasbourg area.
In November 2014, a video shot in Raqqa, Syria, and posted on YouTube showed two Kalashnikov-wielding children, with one shouting out "67", the number of the Bas-Rhin département encompassing Strasbourg. "All Strasbourg is here," said another.
In the latest link to the city, Khamzat Azimov, a 20-year old Chechen from Elsau district, was shot dead outside the Paris Opera in May after stabbing a passer-by to death and wounding five.
5th person dies following the mass shooting at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France. https://t.co/b75xRj5i75
Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist and expert on radicalisation, said: "A big part of (Strasbourg's) jihadists are youths from the suburbs of immigrant origin who feel doubly stigmatised by what they perceive as social prejudices and by the city's 'insolent' wealth."
Chekatt, who was of Algerian origin, had 27 previous convictions and was a violent repeat offender.
He also hung an Osama bin Laden poster on his prison wall at age 19.
Khosrokhavar said he was no jihadist but one of a growing French threat of "new terrorists" that has surfaced since the fall of Isis (Islamic State).
These are often loners with little knowledge of Islam, who feel outcasts in their home country due to their origins, are steeped in crime and live in estates that favour radicalisation.
"They say: 'I claim to be a jihadist because at least I know I'll make a mark'," he said.
Father of Cherif Chekatt, the Strasbourg shooter, confirms son was a fan of ISIS. Defended terror group and said they were “on the right path.” https://t.co/VEpVBDsCmW
The Charlie Hebdo attacks and those of Mohamed Merah in Toulouse were the work of true jihadists, he said.
In this case, Chekatt knew he was about to be arrested for attempted murder. His attack was "nothing but an individual rampage by a man who turns his hatred of society into a quest for glorification in the name of Islam", Khosrokhavar wrote in Le Monde.
"With no reference to radical Islam, the attack would boil down to a monstrous human interest story and would remain insignificant."
An important distinction, but cold comfort to the victims and to overwhelmed French anti-terrorism authorities.
