A suspect suspected of fatally wounding a Greek Orthodox priest with a shotgun blast outside a church in the French city of Lyon was detained by police on Saturday (Oct. 31), French authorities said.
Police sources said Nikolaos Kakavelaki was shot twice at very close range and in the chest as he was closing his church. Kakavelaki remains in the hospital and is not out of critical condition.
The motive for the attack remains unclear, but it follows two other violent killings: on Thursday, a young Tunisian killed three people at knifepoint in the Notre Dame Cathedral in the southern French city of Nice, and early last month, a history teacher was beheaded near Paris.
High security was maintained across France after the deadly stabbing at the cathedral, while President Emmanuel Macron sought to ease tensions with the country’s Muslims.
French leaders have called the incident an Islamist terrorist attack after the perpetrators shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“Allahu Akbar” in Arabic) as they beheaded a woman and killed two others.
Thursday’s attack followed the beheading of high school teacher Samuel Paty last month. The attack followed the republication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
Following Paty’s murder, Macron’s comments sparked protests in the Muslim world. Before Patty’s death, he had shown cartoons of Muhammad in his classroom and said that France would never give up its right to satirize current events through cartoons.
Macron, however, showed more empathy in an interview with the Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera on Saturday.
Macron said, “I can understand that people may be shocked by these cartoons, but I will never accept that the use of violence is justified.”
Meanwhile, French authorities arrested a third man and questioned him in connection with Saturday’s Islamist knife attack at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Nice. The man showed up at the home of a second young Tunisian man suspected of making contact with the attacker during a police raid on Friday.
The prime suspect in the case, Ibrahim Issaoui, 21, remains in a French hospital in critical condition after being critically injured during the police arrest. He crossed the border from Italy on his way to France last month. France, Tunisia, and Italy are jointly investigating to determine the motive for the attack, whether he acted alone, and whether his actions were premeditated.
Issawi is not on a list of suspected Tunisian militants, and French intelligence services know nothing about him.
Tunisian authorities are reportedly investigating whether a group working for the Mahdi Organization carried out the Nice attack. The country’s state news agency TAP reported Friday that investigators are also trying to determine whether the group exists, and said the investigation is based on claims of responsibility made on social media.
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