“The sneakers, they are impeccable. We keep them, maybe someone will need it, ”explains Salim Touazi, president of this small mosque lurking in the Gardon valley. Aboubakar Cissé, born in Mali in 2003 and arrived in France in France about fifteen years later, would undoubtedly appreciate, he who gave hands to the Protestant social center, an association of help for the deprived, and brought from time to time a pizza to the faithful of the mosque, despite a lack of means that no one was aware.
“The best of us”
“He made the five prayers. He came on foot, having fun with his phone when he was dark. It was the best of us, but we didn’t know him more than that, “said Issa (Editor’s note: the people cited by their first name refused to give their surname), another faithful of the Khadidja mosque. Because “Bouba” spanned little. Originally from the Kayes region, Aboubakar Cissé did not tell how he had arrived in France. “He walked,” believes that a faithful knowing. “He went through Algeria, Libya and then Italy,” said another. “He took the road to the sea,” summarized Djibril Cissé Wednesday, his uncle.
Arrived in France around 2018, he failed in the Gard in 2019, after a visit to Montreuil, in the Paris suburbs: “He left without telling us where he was going, he did not want to be a charge,” recalls this uncle. A minor unaccompanied, he was then hosted in a host family and follows four months of French lessons, calculation and writing at school without borders, in Alès. “He was eager to learn. I think that in the country, he had only done the Koranic school, ”recalls the president of the association, Sophie de Chastellier.
It is she who offers him to integrate a masonry CAP in November 2020, at the Private Professional Lycée Pasteur of the Grand-Combe, a city of just under 5,000 inhabitants, victims since the closure of the coal. “It was very strong in mental calculation. For the language and reading the plans, it was more complicated, ”recalls Philippe Diet, his teacher for two years. “Afterwards, we didn’t really hear any news, but like everyone else, we saw him walking in the city, with his djellaba,” continues Christine Lopez-Thomas, the assistant director of the establishment.
“He was alone”
At the Pizzeria Napoli, the boss specially keeps him boxes to be folded so that he accepts some tickets. “He systematically refuses alms,” confirms another faithful of the mosque. We know that he lived here or there, “almost homeless”, according to a witness. “He spoke to everyone, but he was alone. He had lost his papers but refused to be accompanied by the consulate. Undocumented, we could not give her accommodation, ”explains Annie Arcangioli, assistant to the mayor of the Grand-Combe. Aboubakar often went to have a coffee at the Le Central bar behind the church, and washed his laundry in the Lav’ambre laundromat.
-On April 25, he attended the first prayer, the mosque. Then, as every week, it remains alone to clean up, volunteering, before the big Friday prayer, midday. Around 8:30 a.m., a young man with ruffled black hair enters the place of worship, without removing his shoes, a heavy black bag in shoulder. It is Olivier Hadzovic, we will learn later: French, 21, born in a Bosnian family. Part of his family recently settled on the other side of the city, in social housing, facing the fire station.
A few weeks ago, according to a source close to the investigation. “About ten days”, for other residents. But no used to the mosque or inhabitant of the Grand-Combe to which we will show images of the surveillance cameras will recognize him. “Bouba” does not be wary of this man who seems to ask him how to pray and who, when he kneels, takes him several dozen stabs.
“Your shitty allah …”
Then the murderer leaves, on a “too small” bike, notes with a sad smile Salim Touazi, showing the video on his phone. Some 70 investigators are put on the case and locate it near Béziers (Hérault), but they “lack a few minutes”, according to a source close to the investigation. And Olivier Hadzovic finally indulged Sunday evening, in Italy, near Florence. If, on the faith of the silent images of the surveillance cameras, the public prosecutor of Alès, Abdelkrim Grini, had first described on Friday “a faithful giving several stabs to another faithful”, the scenario of an assassination motivated by the hatred of Islam emerges the next day.
“I did it, […] Your allah shitty, “said the murderer twice, in the video he himself filmed, facing his dying victim. In front of the Italian police, he denies having acted by hatred of Islam, not remembering to have filmed. He would only have “killed the first person he found”. Olivier Hadzovic could be given to France “in mid-May”, according to his Italian lawyer. He will then be questioned in Nîmes, for “murder with premeditation and at the rate of race or religion”.
