78 Year Old Man Commits Suicide in Protest to Gay Marriage

Reported by: Joel Noe

Source: France24 | France
First Reported by: Jean Luc Sanna | France


A writer known for his far-right views committed suicide in the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris on Tuesday, prompting authorities to evacuate the building.

Dominique Venner, the author of many history essays that often decried immigration in France and the decline of European civilizations, was 78 years old.

Police sources say he shot himself in front of the altar of the famous church in the early afternoon, pulling out a pistol and putting it in his mouth, before pulling the trigger.

Venner’s last post on his website, published earlier in the day, appeared to indicate that his dramatic suicide was a way to protest against a recent law legalizing gay marriage in France.

He called on people to join a protest on May 26 against the controversial law.

"It is here and now that our destiny is at stake. This second is as important as the rest of a life. That is why it is important to be yourself until the last moment,” he wrote.

Notre Dame, which this year is celebrating its 850th anniversary, is one of the biggest destinations for tourists visiting the French capital.

The cathedral contained around 1,500 visitors at the time of the suicide, all of whom were then evacuated without incident, said France’s Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who visited Notre Dame following the incident.

“I can only imagine the shock for these people, both faithful and tourists,” he said.

“Notre Dame … is one of the biggest symbols of the capital and the country and we can only imagine the impact that this [act] will have.”

It was the second dramatic suicide in less than a week in Paris, after a 50-year-old man with a history of family problems shot himself dead Thursday in a primary school near the Eiffel Tower, in front of about a dozen stunned children.

Venner’s suicide was later hailed as a political gesture by National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

"All respect to Dominique Venner whose final, eminently political act was to try to wake up the people of France," Le Pen said on Twitter, though she added later that "it is in life and hope that France will renew and save itself".

Bruno Gollnisch, a senior National Front figure and member of the European Parliament also paid tribute to Venner, referring to him as an “extremely brilliant intellectual”.

"I think his dramatic gesture is a protest against the decadence of our society," Gollnisch told BFM TV.

In a final essay on his website, Venner railed against France's adoption of a "vile law" legalizing gay marriage and adoption.

The gay marriage bill has sparked numerous protests in France, with many on the right bitterly opposed to the act. The bill was finally signed into law by President François Hollande on Sunday.

Venner also denounced immigration from North Africa which, he said, was the real "peril", calling on activists to take measures to protect "French and European identities".

In what appeared to be a reference to his suicide, Venner wrote: "There will certainly need to be new, spectacular, symbolic gestures to shake off the sleepiness... and re-awaken the memories of our origins."

"We are reaching a time when words must be backed up with acts," he added.

Venner fought for France in the 1954-62 Algerian War of Independence and was a member of the OAS (Secret Armed Organization), a short-lived paramilitary group that opposed Algeria's independence from France.

He went on to have a long career publishing right-wing essays, military histories and books on weaponry and hunting.

Father Admits to Killing His Children

Reported by: Joel Noe

Source: France24 | France
First Reported by: News Writes | UK - France


A 48-year-old British national admitted to French police on Sunday that he slit the throats of his two children, aged 5 and 10. The children's bodies were discovered Saturday at his apartment in Saint-Priest, a suburb of Lyon.  

A 48-year-old divorced Briton locked in a bitter custody battle confessed on Sunday that he had killed his two young children by slitting their throats near the eastern French city of Lyon.

The bodies of a five-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy were discovered on Saturday afternoon in the man's apartment in Saint-Priest, a southeastern suburb of Lyon.

The unemployed father confessed to the gruesome crime "but did not go into details of the motive", prosecutors said.

The tragedy was "linked to a bitter separation" and "the state of his visitation rights which he considered insufficient", another judicial source told AFP.

"In 2010, there was an incident of violence with his spouse which led to restrictions on his visitation rights," the source said.

He was arrested on Saturday evening in Lyon and placed in custody. A judicial official said a knife which is thought to have been the murder weapon had been found.

The man had visitation rights but only in the presence of another person, the official said, adding that this was the first time he had brought the children home to his apartment on the second floor of a four-storey building without a third party being present.

He remained in custody late Sunday and was to be presented to a prosecutor on Monday when he was expected to be charged.

Police were also questioning his ex-wife, notably to learn more about "the legal framework of the children's visits to their father".

"We understand that a British national has been arrested in France," a Foreign Office spokesman told AFP. "We are in contact with the French authorities and we await the outcome of their investigation."

Several witnesses said the man fled on roller skates after his former wife encountered him on the stairwell of the building and saw him with bloodstained clothes. She immediately alerted the police.

A neighbour said the mother was soon joined by relatives, including her brother-in-law and the children's grandparents, and was lucid although in shock.

A psychiatrist from the emergency services was immediately dispatched to give her counselling.

"They were devastated but relatively composed," the neighbour said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"She said: 'He has killed them'. I tried to comfort her saying we didn't know as yet although I knew at the bottom of my heart that they were dead."

Ahmed Benguedda, another neighbour, told AFP the couple had divorced "two or three years ago" and that the man had drinking problems and was a wife beater.

After the divorce the wife, who worked as an assistant accountant, moved out of the apartment they had jointly bought and was living in the Isere region of eastern France.

But the children were "well-balanced", said Benguedda, whose seven-year-old daughter often played with them.
"All the people in this building are in a state of shock," Benguedda said.

More neighbors were being questioned by the police on Sunday.
 

Alleged Auschwitz Guard Arrested in Germany on Monday

Reported by: Joel Noe

Source: Der Spiegel | Germany
First Reported by: Efraim Zuroff | Simon Wiesenthal Center
Image Credit: Yad Vashem Archives | Date: May 27, 1944

Hans Lipschis, a 93-year-old thought to have been a guard at Auschwitz, was arrested in Germany on Monday. The Lithuanian-born man, who was added to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted list last month, says he was only a cook. But prosecutors believe he supported the killing in his role as a guard. 

A man thought to have been a guard at the Auschwitz death camp has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of having assisted in the mass murder carried out there, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office said on Monday.

A doctor had examined 93-year-old Hans Lipschis and found him to be fit for detention and a judge remanded him in custody. "We will try to ascertain what he did in Auschwitz," a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said.

Lipschis is believed to have been in Auschwitz from autumn 1941 until it was liberated in early 1945. He was added to the Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals list kept by the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem in April. The Wiesenthal Center welcomed the arrest. 

"This is a very positive step, we welcome the arrest, I hope this will only be the first of many arrests, trials and convictions of death camp guards," the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Efraim Zuroff told AFP news agency.

Lipschis told Welt am Sonntag newspaper in April that he had only been a cook in Auschwitz. But investigators said he was "under strong suspicion of having supported the murders in the concentration camp," the office said in a statement. 

More than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered in Auschwitz. 

The prosecutors office has been investigating him since November 2012. He was arrested because authorities believed he might leave the country. He has a daughter in the US, German media reported.

According to information obtained by the German news agency DPA, Lipschis was a member of the SS "Death's Head" unit that ran the camp. He later worked as a cook for the SS adminstration.

Born in Lithuania, Lipschis emigrated to the US in 1956 and settled in Chicago. He was deported in 1982 because he hadn't told US authorities about his past in the SS. He moved to Germany in 1983 and has lived in Aalen, in south-western Germany, since then. 

"Charges against him are being prepared," said the prosecutor's office. 

Late Push on War Crimes

The arrest followed news last month that Germany's central office for investigating Nazi war crimes had launched a major push to bring Nazi death camp guards to justice and had obtained a list of 50 former Auschwitz guards still living in Germany.

The Central Office of the Judicial Authorities for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes said it had received the list of names of Auschwitz guards from the museum at the memorial site. The office is now checking which of the men, most of whom were likely to have been members of the SS, could stand trial.

Schrimm's office is exploiting a recent re-interpretation of German criminal law in order to bring to justice people who were small cogs in the Holocaust machine -- men and women who had hitherto been spared prosecution because they couldn't be proven to have committed specific crimes, and could hide behind the argument that they were following orders.

Prosecutions have been made easier by the precedent set by the trial of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, found guilty by a Munich court in May 2011 and sentenced to five years in jail for being an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews while he was a guard at Sobibor in occupied Poland. 

 Since the Demjanjuk trial, prosecutors no longer need to establish culpability in specific murders to secure a conviction. Having been a guard is now seen as proof enough of having assisted in murder. 

The crucial piece of evidence against Demjanjuk was his SS identity card from Sobibor. He died in a nursing home in the southern Bavarian town of Bad Feilnbach in March 2012, after being released pending his appeal.

Shark Attack: French honeymooner killed in attack in Reunion

Reported by: Joel Noe

Source: Le Local | France
First Reported by: Rémi Vert & Jean Roidiller | France

A French honeymooner was attacked and killed by a shark on Wednesday while he was surfing not far from the beach on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, authorities said.

The 36-year-old was in the sea off the popular beach of Brisants de Saint-Gilles when a shark charged at him twice, prompting a nearby swimmer to raise the alert when he saw blood on the water, the local prefecture said.

Lifeguards jumped in the water to fetch the victim, who had lost a lot of blood and was in cardiac and respiratory arrest. They brought him back to the beach but were unable to revive him.

The shark had bitten the surfer on the arm and on the thigh. His wife was on the beach when the attack happened, and is being treated for shock, authorities said.

The deadly shark attack was the first this year on the island, where three people were killed by sharks in the past two years.

Last summer, another surfer in the Reunion island was attacked by a shark that tore off his arm and leg, although he survived.

Sharks are not man-eaters, but sometimes mistake humans for their natural prey, like seals or tortoises, and at other times hurt surfers as they "mouth" them out of curiosity, experts say.

Last year, 78 shark attacks were reported around the world, of which eight were fatal.

The series of shark attacks in the Reunion island has seen a number of measures implemented. Local authorities have initiated several scientific studies to try and better understand the way of life of the animals.

People have also been deployed near beaches on boats or in the water to keep an eye on swimmers and surfers and spot sharks before they attack.