Funeral for Kurdish shooting victims at Paris
Thousands of Kurds from across Europe travelled to the Paris suburbs for the politically charged funeral of three of their own killed in a December attack in the French capital.
Buses were chartered to bring people from across France and some neighbouring countries to the ceremony in Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris, local sources said.
Tears and cries of "Martyrs live forever!" greeted the coffins, wrapped in the flags of the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Kurdish-controlled Rojava territory in northern Syria.
A xenophobic gunman, William Malet, is suspected of killing two men and one woman in a December 23 attack on the Ahmet Kaya Kurdish community centre in Paris's 10th district.
His victims were Abdurrahman Kizil, singer and political refugee Mir Perwer and Emine Kara, a leader of the Movement of Kurdish Women in France.
Arrested after the shootings and formally charged on December 26, 69-year-old Malet told investigators he had a "pathological" hatred for foreigners and wanted to "murder migrants", prosecutors said.
Malet, a retired train driver, had a violent criminal history and had just left detention over a previous incident.
But many Kurds in France's 150,000-strong community refuse to believe he acted alone, calling his actions a "terrorist" attack and pointing the finger at Türkiye.
