Mental Health Crisis Mischaracterized as Terrorism, Critics Say

Redouane is said to have come out in a djellaba, in his neighborhood, to have called for prayer, then, as the Midilibre site points out: "furious he would have started to shout attacks against "the Jews", judging that it was necessary to "finish what Hitler started" and repeating in a loop "Allah Akbar" (God is great in Arabic, note)".

The people on the spot called the authorities, talking about an individual "who had gone mad". And he would have assaulted the gendarmes, in his angry outburst. In court, his lawyer Me Anaïs Séguy (Narbonne bar) insisted on one fact: "The violence, my client acknowledges, but not the glorification of terrorism. Radicalization, he strongly contests it. It’s a psychiatric case. In custody, a first expert concluded that his discernment was impaired, a second expert who examined him at the end of his crisis, concluded that he had mood disorders". Psychiatric case therefore.

But it will still not be the asylum, but prison. Indeed, he was not hospitalized, he was convicted of glorifying terrorism. Sentenced to 9 years in prison on March 15, he is now detained in the Béziers prison where he is still. And in prison, here he is doing his thing again, proving once again that it is psychiatric treatment that would suit him best.

The site L’Indépendant writes: "the prison guards’ unions, an attack, which they describe as "terrorist", was "narrowly avoided"". A terrorist attack? Is this term really appropriate? According to the same source: "the inmate would have shouted from the window to his fellow inmates: "I’m going to burn them, I’m a Muslim, I want to see their skin melt." Words that worried the guards, who also felt a "strong smell of hot oil" coming from his cell".

No need to be a psychologist to understand that this man is crazy... And even psychiatrists, according to his lawyer, say he is! So why doesn’t the French justice system make the difference? At the same time fueling Islamophobia...

Let us recall that the Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan had recently said that the Christchurch attacks are only the result of a "defamation campaign" aimed at associating Islam with terrorism.