French protests and ongoing terror probe - latest updates

Philippe Moreau Chervolet (0:00)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman.

Henry Samuel (0:04)

On Newstalk, with Ciara.

Shane Coleman (0:08)

Now, a shooting has taken place, and a terror probe is underway. After one person was killed, four others injured in a shooting in a Paris suburb. We're joined by Henry Samuel, Paris correspondent with The Telegraph. Henry, what do we know about what happened?

Henry Samuel (0:25)

Well, the big development is the French anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating whether this was a racist terror attack. But as you said, a gunman, a 39-year-old man drove through a suburb of Paris called Trap, and then the neighboring La Verrière is about 30 kilometers west of Paris this morning at 10.3 and just fired bursts of automatic weapon people in the street indiscriminately.

Very sadly, one man, a 26-year-old was killed, and there is a 12-year-old girl reportedly struck by eight bullets who's injured, but apparently her condition has since stabilized, and the suspect was arrested shortly afterwards. So we don't know a lot more, but they haven't ruled out terrorism at this stage, and in fact, the Interior Minister said, has now called it clearly a terrorist crime, but we don't have any more.

Shane Coleman (1:26)

Absolutely terrifying for those people who were on the street at the time. Just very finally, Anna, I'm conscious that you've already said that at this stage, police are still exploring what the motive would be.

Is there any suggestion that it could be in any way linked to the unrest of the last couple of weeks?

Henry Samuel (1:46)

I don't think we can stretch it that far. But one thing we can say is that the mayor of Trap, Trap is a suburb that's got a big immigrant population and is kind of known to be a bit of a hotbed of Islamism.

Certainly, that is his reputation. And the mayor is saying that this was objectively a racist, probably Islamophobic attack. So it's not an Islamist attack. It's the other way around, probably. And that's where, but there's no link that's been made. But obviously, as you know, France and Paris in particular are in a state of nervous exhaustion after the riots that we've been seeing. And we're all gearing up for another potential round tomorrow. So it's the last thing that people need is a sort of shooting.

Shane Coleman (2:38)

Thank you indeed for talking to us, Henry Samuel, their Paris correspondent with The Telegraph. Let's speak to Philippe Moreau Chervolet, the Political Scientist at the Science Po University in Paris. Philippe, Henry mentioned, yes, just there the looking ahead to the weekend.

Are we expecting things to get hot and heavy again this weekend in Paris?

Philippe Moreau Chervolet (3:03)

Yes, we do expect that. The same amount of people are awaited this weekend as last week. So 500,000 maybe in the whole country. So it's a lot. And what we don't know is that whether we will have rioters, looters this time or not.

Shane Coleman (3:24)

Can I ask you something I'm kind of curious about? I mean, obviously, there are a lot of people on the streets protesting. Where do ordinary French people, where does middle ground French people, where do they stand in this? Are they supportive of the protest? Are they horrified of the protest or is it a mixed bag?

Philippe Moreau Chervolet (3:44)

It's a mixed situation. They are in favor of the protest because obviously, they support the demands of the schoolers, so of their kids or their grandchildren. They support their demands. The needs in the schools are real. We need toilet paper in the schools. We need teachers in the school.

A lot of things are missing, so they support the demands, but 91% of them are against the violence that we saw last weekend. They don't want this violence to happen ever again, and that's a strong demand on the part of the population.

Shane Coleman (4:22)

Politically, is there a sense that the original protests, with those kind of legitimate goals in mind, that that has been harnessed by more malign forces, particularly on the extreme left, that they are using that for their own political ends?

Philippe Moreau Chervolet (4:41)

Obviously, yes. We saw that the far left is now split in two, so to speak. There is a political party on the far left, La France Insoumise, France Unbound, that is more moderate, and there is a more extreme force, what we call l'ultra gauche in France, that is really burning down official buildings, trying to do it anyway, and trying to fight against the police forces but with real weapons. So it's something that we didn't see much before, that's quite new.