Elderly Ex-Political Candidate Arrested for Shooting at Bayonne Mosque, Injuring Two

According to the local press, the suspect is a former candidate of the former National Front (FN) in the 2015 departmental elections in the Landes. However, after these elections, he had been "excluded from the party," says Jacques Leclercq, Deputy Delegate of the Landes for the National Rally (RN) to AFP.

In reality, according to numerous testimonies from his entourage, this old man, a retired civil servant, showed signs of mental imbalance and was known for his "verbal excesses". Although he has lived in the municipality for many years, he is not known to have any friends.

An admirer of the polemicist Eric Zemmour, he "was someone who had obsessions," confides Francis Giraudie to the Agence France-Presse (AFP). Indeed, according to the First Deputy Mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx, the octogenarian "felt that he was not being listened to. He would sometimes come to the town hall, or call, to complain about various things". Once, remembers Bertrand Lagarde, another elected official, "he had verbally assaulted the mayor, I had to intervene to calm him down".

A sculptor in his spare time, the old man had nevertheless managed to seduce the local press, five years earlier, with his work, "France with an Open Heart or Human Misery," the same source notes.