Just two months after a Filipino tourist with a German passport was killed in a knife attack near the Eiffel Tower, Paris has been struck by yet another bloody, and manifestly politically-motivated, knife attack in a high-profile location: this time, the bustling Gare de Lyon train station. Last Saturday morning, Sagou Gouno Kassogue, a Malian refugee resident in Italy, began attacking travellers in the station seemingly at random, hitting a 66-year-old man in the head with a hammer and stabbing him in the abdomen.
The 66-year-old, who has been identified only as “Claude”, remains in critical condition as of this writing, and two other people were, per the delicate expression used by France’s AFP wire service and adopted by the Daily Mail here, “slightly wounded”. Here are some pictures of the “slight” wounds to the neck and the hands suffered by one of them. The victim, who has been identified only as “Christophe”, was one of several travellers who intervened to immobilise the assailant.
In the report on France’s BFM news television from which the images are taken, Christophe describes pinning Kassogue to the ground after another traveller had tackled him and becoming dimly aware that the assailant’s knife was in his neck. He suffered the wounds to his hands when trying to pull the assailant’s hand back, a reflex which undoubtedly saved his life.
The weapons used in the attack can be seen in the below photo (source: Sûreté RATP). It is worth noting that Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, the perpetrator of the December attack near the Eiffel Tower, also came armed with a knife and a hammer, first stabbing the Filipino-German tourist, Collin Christian Bröter, and then assaulting a British tourist with the hammer when trying to make his getaway.
As has become the custom in France, French authorities have refused to qualify the Gare de Lyon attack as a terror attack, insisting instead on Kassogue’s alleged psychiatric problems. Following his arrest, Kassogue was even briefly removed from policy custody and transferred to a psychiatric ward before being returned to jail again.
French authorities have likewise insisted that there is no evidence of any religious motive for the attack: this despite the existence of the below TikTok video from December, which suggests that Kassogue was already planning his attack at the time and expected or hoped to die when committing it. The caption reads: “R.I.P. in three months. May Allah accept me in his paradise.” It is not only the reference to Allah which is significant here. The suicide attack is of course the preferred MO of Islamic terrorism.
As reported by the daily Le Parisen, investigators have also acknowledged finding “Salafist” content on Kassogue’s TikTok channel. Salafism is the radical current of Sunni Islam which has given rise to Al-Qaeda and kindred Islamic terror groups.
Evidence has emerged that Italian authorities likewise treated Kassogue as a psychiatric case and even indeed granted him asylum in part due to alleged psychological trauma caused by the violent conditions in his native country. It is worth noting, however, that his since deleted TikTok account (see below) had some 44,000 followers – without, moreover, him following anyone! So, 44,000 people evidently did not find him so crazy.
Kassogue’s native Mali has been in the throes of an Islamist insurgency for over a decade and French troops were present in the country from 2013 to 2022. In videos on his TikTok channel, Kassogue accused France of pillaging his country and the entire African continent “from A to Z” and made no secret of his hatred for France and the French: “all French people”, as he puts it in the video available here.
In light of these statements, French authorities have in the meanwhile recognised a “racist” motive for Kassogue’s attack, but continue to refuse to qualify it as terrorism despite the obvious political motivation.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and find him on Bluesky.
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It’s becoming laughable at this point. If a news article talks about a violent attack, or about assault and rape, or about sexually abusing minors and you don’t see the name or photo of the criminal responsible for it, you can already assume his immigration status, and you’d be right 90% of the time. Terrorists are screaming out why they’re doing all these attacks, but the media is deaf. But get 10 people together that are displeased with how the government runs things and the media won’t shut up about “far right” and “white supremacy”.
How delusional do you have to be to trust the media these days?
Why can’t we just accede to his desire for martyrdom?
This one’s doing the rounds, in case you didn’t see it. I honestly thought it was AI-generated, but apparently it’s legit. The contrast with the backdrop is just seriously peculiar…How many were in attendance, I wonder?
https://twitter.com/WayneGb88/status/1755302991760937255
Absolutely grotesque.
Plod excelling at F. A.
Yes, agreed. That’s how my mind works now too. A bit like if somebody dies suddenly and unexpectedly, especially decades before the end of their expected lifespan, I always assume it’s the death jab until proven otherwise.
And I note that Afghan alkali attacker in Clapham still hasn’t been found. For somebody who’s reportedly got ”significant facial injuries”, in a city that has masses of surveillance cameras, it’s surely safe to assume he’s being helped and kept hidden by somebody he knows. Well, either that or he’s walking around freely, identifying as a Muslim woman, complete with burka and niqab.
Here’s another depressing travesty of justice. Another non-accidental ‘error’ by the Home Office ( as if we were born yesterday! ) to add to the extensive list. But I’m sure he’s seen the error of his ways and is now a totally reformed character, so that’s okay then;
”A terrorist who murdered three people was allowed to stay in the country after a series of “woeful” Home Office errors.
Khairi Saadallah murdered James Furlong, 36, Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, and David Wails, 49, in Forbury Gardens, Reading, on Saturday June 20, 2020.
Now, an inquest has heard how Saadallah had wrongly been granted five years’ humanitarian leave to remain by the Home Office.
The department made a series of “woeful” errors in handling the case, which included allowing him to stay in the country even though he had served five prison sentences for violent offences.
The inquest was told that the Home Office had no record of Saadallah’s arrival in Britain on a multiple-entry tourist visa with his father in March 2012 and again in September 2012, reports The Times.
The department also had no record of his failure to depart by the visa expiry date on September 28 before he claimed asylum on October 16.
Six years later, Saadallah was still in the country. This is despite exhausting all his appeals, after launching a new legal challenge to his deportation.
He argued that Libya had become unsafe in the meantime due to a new round of conflict in the country. He was eventually granted five years’ leave to remain on a humanitarian protection basis and withdrew his legal appeal.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/reading-terrorist-khairi-saadallah-home-office-failings
I do not blame the trash that are coming here. I do however blame the trash that brought the trash here. —-Government. hand wringing parasite globalists that will facilitate our cultural destruction so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the One World Government people at the UN and WEF
When the mistakes always go one way, maybe they’re not mistakes.
Or they only turn into mistakes when they happen to become public.
I remember that (I was in the Forbury earlier that day and the police blocked all of the area for days). But this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill islamist terror attack. The victims were all gay and I strongly suspect this was someone having seriously violent second thoughts about “experiences he had shared with them”, ie, that the motivation was rather personal than religious. That’s obviously not an excuse. But still a different kind of murderous delusion.
Self hating projection.
Jealousy would be another conjecture. Or some drug-fuelled tete-a-tete somebody really didn’t want to remember when he became sober again. As far as I can recall, nothing about the motive for the murder was ever published. This happened on a sunny day right in the center of a popular public park which suggests that it was rather a targetted than a random attack.
We’re already being set up for the Afghan chemical attacker being declared to have “mental health problems” as justification for his murderous attack.
A fellow Afghan appeared on the news pleading for the Afghan community not to assist him because he “needs medical attention and may have mental health issues.”
I knew people could sleepwalk but I never knew a whole continent could. ——-But in the last 20 years or so I have realised that Europe is SLEEPWALKING
How perfectly horrendous everything is: these obviously terrorist Muslim attacks, the cancer epidemic (as in Dr Dalgliesh’s article), the wars. All extremely depressing but only to be expected in the spiritual war we are in, essentially waged against us by the devil. We need to (re)turn to God.
I don’t really agree with this statement. But it’s certainly a lot better than many others. Defeatism always ends in defeat.
I don’t mean to sound defeatist – sorry! I resist at every opportunity: masks, lockdowns, jabs, and now in our area, Lower Traffic Neighbourhoods – a couple of other guys and I, all in our 70s or more, are standing at the very badly signed barriers warning motorists of the fines they can expect if they drive thorugh). We do what we can! And fight on!
You didn’t. That was the part of the statement I liked — it offered a positive perspective instead of the more common “We are doomed!” mongering. I’ve been raised by pretty religious parents and used to call myself a Christian during most of my lifetime. I’ve started to reconsider that due to too many bad experiences with organised (protestant) churches.
So I expect you disagreed with what I said about returning to God? I’m sorry you have had bad experiences with churches. We were blessed with ours, which although it closed initially during lockdowns did manage to stay open in one way by having ‘support groups’ where we all had lunch together, pray together, etc. And now we have a large percentage (of a very small church) who are on board with everything and still tolerate those in the church who aren’t on board (as they tolerate us in spite of disagreeing with us). I hope and pray that should there be another lockdown or other measures, we’d stay open. There’s no perfect church because there’s no perfect human being (Jesus being the only one!).