French mosque murder suspect detained in Italy

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PARIS (Reuters) -A man has been arrested in Italy on suspicion of stabbing a man to death while the victim was praying inside a mosque in southern France, French authorities said on Monday.

The public prosecutor of the southern city of Ales in the Gard region, where the attack took place on Friday, Abdelkrim Grini told BFM TV on Monday: “I can confirm that the alleged perpetrator did indeed go to an Italian police station, near Florence, last night at around 11-11.30 pm.”

“We knew he had left France … It was only a matter of time before we got our hands on him,” he added.

The suspect handed himself in Pistoia, a city near Florence, and will be transferred to Florence later today, Italian authorities said.

France will quickly start extradition procedures, Grini said. “We will do all we can to have him back as soon as possible.”

Commenting on the motivation for the attack, Grini said: “The anti-Muslim motivation is the preferred lead (…) but there are also elements in the investigation that suggest there were other motivations for carrying the act … perhaps a fascination with death, to be considered as a serial killer.”

French politicians on Sunday condemned the attack, which was captured on video and published on Snapchat.

France, a country that prides itself on its homegrown secularism known as “laicite,” has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering more than 6 million and making up around 10% of the country’s population.

(Reporting by Claude Chendjou and Dominique Vidalon; Addinal reporting by Giselda Vagnoni, editing by David Evans)