KOTLI QAZI, Pakistan (AP)– Ali Hassan was only 15 when he left Pakistan to be smuggled to Europe, following the course of his older sibling and many other boys from his home country imagining a better life.
Almost three years later, Hassan is today in a Paris prison after presumably assaulting and seriously injuring two people with a meat cleaver. Prior To the Sept. 25 attack, he proclaimed in a video he was looking for revenge after the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo released caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
Little is known about Hassan’s time in France. There has actually been confusion over his age, however The Associated Press acquired his main recognition documents in Pakistan that confirmed he is currently 18.
French authorities are investigating the Sept. 25 stabbings as an Islamic extremist attack. The stabbings echoed a January 2015 attack on the paper that eliminated 12 of its staffers by militants who claimed they were acting in the name of al-Qaida.
So far, there has actually been no indication Hassan was linked to any terrorist group. Rather, the wrath of the teen– far from home in a world greatly different from any he understood– may have roots in Pakistan’s exorbitant blasphemy laws.
Hassan’s journey began in his home village of Kotli Qazi, deep in a rural area of Punjab province. The small village rests a narrow, rutted dirt roadway weaving through huge farming fields.
The small cement homes are crowded together, their walls packed with dung patties baking in the blistering twelve noon day sun. By sundown they’ll be removed the walls and used to sustain the evening fires.
Many of the boys, consisting of youth friends of Hassan, said they dreamed of reaching Europe to discover prosperity– a minimum of 18 youths from the town have emigrated abroad over the last few years. At the very same time, they held up Hassan as a hero for carrying out the attack.
In the district where Kotli Qazi is located, a hard-line political party, Tehreek-e Labbaik, holds effective impact– nearly its sole agenda to uphold the blasphemy laws, which require the death sentence against those who upset Islam. Just a few months after Hassan got here in France, Labbaik Party-backed protesters rallied and obstructed roads in the district and other parts of Pakistan in November 2018, furious that a young Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was freed from death row where she ‘d dealt with execution on blasphemy charges.
” He went to France because compared to other nations, like Saudi Arabia, making there is much better,” a childhood friend, Mohammad Ikram, said of Hassan. “Youths from our location wish to live in Europe.”
However, he included, “all our buddies stated if they remained in his place they would have done the very same if they had seen anything blasphemous versus the Prophet.”
Ali’s veteran next-door neighbor Amina, in her 80 s, kept in mind Hassan as a good boy.
” He never ever went looking for mischief like a few of those other kids. No, he just wanted to study,” she stated. Sitting on a standard rope-woven bed in a dirty substance she shared with numerous member of the family she said: “Consistently he did the ideal thing. You may not concur, but he did ideal thing.”
Next-door neighbors and shopkeepers said Pakistan’s powerful security agencies informed them to say absolutely nothing of Hassan or the Paris attack. A number of expressed concern for the image their tiny town was getting.
” Please don’t injure the dignity of our town, do not take away our dignity,” pleaded one store owner, who didn’t wish to give his name fearful of the plainclothes police standing close by.
Hassan’s father, Arshad Mahmoud, refused to speak to reporters who knocked on his house’s gate. Pakistani authorities and intelligence alerted him versus speaking publicly after he honestly promoted his kid’s actions.
Shuja Nawaz, author, political and security analyst and a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, stated the influx of young migrants from nations such as Pakistan into Europe brings 2 aspects into crash.
” First, the conditions in the house countries, like Pakistan, that progressively are becoming more Islamicized and anti-Western through the influence of mullahs and populist governments, while their education systems fall apart,” he stated. “Second, in the Western countries, where migrants end up lawfully or illegally, there is a Ghettoization of Muslim immigrants who rely on religion as a defense reaction and rallying point.”
Authorities identification files seen by the AP verify Hassan’s date of birth as Aug. 10, 2002, the second youngest of 9 siblings.
An older sibling, Bilal, now 32 and reportedly residing in Italy, was the first of the brother or sisters to travel to Europe, next-door neighbors and police authorities stated. Hassan’s more youthful brother, Ali Murtaza, now 16, also moved to France and was arrested in addition to Hassan, though he was later on released.
Ikram, Hassan’s good friend, stated the “prohibited” method to Europe can be extremely dangerous but from his village the bulk who go are, like Hassan, in between the age of 15 and 16 since minors frequently won’t be ejected.
Hassan started the journey in early 2018, crossing through Iran, Turkey and Italy and finally reaching France in August2018 He was registered as an unaccompanied minor and was at first put in real estate in the Paris suburban area of Cergy, where he received aid accorded to minors.
Eventually, he relocated to Pantin, a working-class residential area that has a large immigrant population, including North Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans and Pakistanis. He was residing in a house with a number of other Pakistanis in a dirty brick structure above a hooka bar and a car parts shop.
” They were quiet, they had their lives, left in the early morning to work,” said Zyed Zaied, who runs the auto store. He stated he didn’t understand where Hassan worked however said Pakistanis typically find tasks in dining establishments.
It remained in Pantin that Hassan was living when, on Sept. 1, Charlie Hebdo republished the caricatures of Muhammad. The paper stated it was a program of press freedoms on the eve of the start of the first trial over the January 2015 attacks.
On Sept. 25, Hassan had a visit at the Val d’Oise regional administration to examine his residency situation. Hassan had actually simply turned 18, indicating he was no longer a minor and would have lost his claim to residency in France unless he might make an asylum case.
Instead, Hassan went to what he thought were the offices of Charlie Hebdo, unaware that they had actually moved. With a cleaver, he assaulted two individuals who, it turned out, worked for a documentary business, seriously wounding them. He was caught right after, speckles of blood on his forehead, on the steps of the Bastille Opera.
Relatives informed private investigators that in recent weeks, Hassan had actually been seeing videos by Tahreek-e Labbaik Party’s leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, knocking the caricatures’ publication, French district attorneys stated.
In a video posted to social networks ahead of the stabbing, Hassan wept and stated he had been influenced by the celebration.
” If I sound psychological, then there is a reason for it and let me share it with you. Here in France, caricatures of the Prophet were drawn, and I am going to withstand it today.”
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Associated Press authors Asim Tanvir in Multan, Pakistan and Elaine Ganley and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
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