One year to the day after his assassination by a radicalized Islamist ex-student, the city of Arras (Pas-de-Calais) pays tribute, Sunday October 13, to Professor Dominique Bernard during a ceremony in the presence of several ministers and his relatives. The ceremony takes place Heroes’ Square at 11 a.m.the time at which Dominique Bernard, 57, was killed with several stab wounds by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a Russian from Ingushetia, then aged 20. The centrist mayor of the town, Frédéric Leturque, welcomed a “sober and dignified ceremony” and assured that one year after the death of the teacher, “we are together”. Follow our live stream.
A ceremony focused on the arts. Thought with those close to the teacher as a “cultural memory sequence”according to the mayor of Arras Frédéric Leturque, the ceremony must include different artistic performances, from an interpretation of Mozart’s K.285 quartet to that of a song by Damien Saez, Paradise childrenaccording to the forecast. Also on the program are poetry readings and contemporary dance.
His widow speaks for the first time. “I need to be there to defend and transmit Dominique’s humanist values. The word ‘freedom’ has taken on another color for me. Equality, fraternity, secularism too”explained Isabelle Bernard in The World. In another interview with The Voice of the North(New window)the professor warns that it is “out of the question” that there be a political recovery of the tribute planned for Sunday.
Three men indicted. In the investigation into the assassination of Dominique Bernard, three people are indicted: the attacker, a former student of the establishment, originally from Ingushetia (Russia) and radicalized for several years; his little brother, still a minor, indicted for complicity in terrorist assassination, suspected of having informed his eldest on how to use knives and one of their cousins, suspected of abstaining from preventing a crime.
