French police hunt suspected killer of Muslim worshipper inside mosque

Bosnian man kills Muslim

 French police are hunting a Bosnian man who killed a worshipper in a mosque and filmed the crime on his mobile phone.

The killer is a 20-year-old Frenchman of Bosnian origin who lived in the area, lived on social benefits, and spent most of his time playing video games.

The young man who stabbed a worshipper 50 times last Friday morning at the Khadija Mosque in the town of La Grand-Combe in the far south of France is a 20-year-old Frenchman of Bosnian origin who lived in the area, lived on social benefits, and spent most of his time playing video games, according to police. His brother was detained for questioning and later released, acquitted.

The victim, Ghassma Abubakar, was born 23 years ago in Mali and had lived in  neighborhood near the mosque for years. According to the local newspaper Midi Libre, he was well-known and popular in La Grande-Combe, which has a population of 5,000. He had a professional construction degree from the private Pasteur Institute.

Video of a friend

According to the police, who have not yet released any footage, Abubakar arrived at the mosque at 8:00 a.m. to clean the hall in preparation for Friday prayers. According to surveillance camera footage, he was alone in the mosque when another man arrived and stood beside him, as if preparing to pray. They exchanged a few words, and Abubakar then returned to begin his prayer. As he knelt, the attacker stabbed him 50 times. He then filmed him bleeding on the ground, dead. He then fled, and from his hiding place, he broadcast a video of his crime to an acquaintance on the social media platform Discord. He later deleted the video.

Hours passed, and worshippers discovered Abu Bakr's body at 11:00 a.m. They called emergency services, and patrols from the nearby city of Nîmes police arrived and began investigating the case. Three investigators from the Paris counterterrorism unit were dispatched to monitor the investigation. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday, while residents of the town of La Grand-Combe began collecting donations to transport the victim's body to his family in Mali.

In the video he filmed, the assailant, who is not Muslim, says, "I did it... They'll definitely arrest me," after noticing the presence of surveillance cameras in the hall, which also captured him committing his crime. He also indicated in the video that he wanted to attack others, but did not mention his motive for killing Abu Bakr.

The reason for his presence in the mosque remains unknown, but the regional prosecutor, Abdelkarim Grini, told the French newspaper Le Parisien that the killer "did not know the victim, and that the possibility of a racist or Islamophobic motive is under consideration, along with an examination of his psychological and mental state."

In Paris, French Prime Minister François Bayrou condemned "this Islamophobic atrocity, captured on video," according to a post on the X platform. He added, "We stand with the victim's loved ones and with the deeply shocked faithful... State resources are being mobilized to ensure the killer is apprehended and punished." The Interior Minister also condemned the crime, which he described Saturday as "a heinous assassination that took place in a sacred place of worship and touches the hearts of all believers."