A man suspected of having burned a Koran in a Villeurbanne mosquenear Lyon, on the night of Sunday to Monday, was arrested on Tuesday evening and placed in police custody, AFP learned from the Lyon prosecutor’s office and police source. The suspect, an adult whose age has not been specified, described as “psychologically fragile”, was arrested shortly before 9 pm, according to the same source.
In the night from Sunday to Monday, shortly before the first morning prayer, “an individual with an open face entered the prayer room, seized a copy of the Koran, set it on fire and dropped it outside the building before fleeing,” the Rhône mosques council (CMR) announced on Tuesday.
A survey for “degradation or deterioration by a dangerous means for people, committed due to race, ethnicity, nation or religion”
This man entered the mosque around 3:45 am and had an exchange with a faithful who asked him to take off his shoes, a police source told AFP. There was no violence but by coming out, he seized a Koran made available to the faithful and “would have burned him in the street,” she added. There was no call to the police, who discovered the facts because the treasurer of the mosque filed a complaint on Tuesday, according to this source.
The faithful witness of the fire had extinguished the flames without giving the alert because he had not realized what had happened, explained Kamel Kabtane, the rector of the Great Mosque of Lyon. He finally talked about it to managers who consulted video surveillance and complaints on Tuesday, he said.
The investigation was entrusted to the police for “degradation or deterioration by a dangerous means for people, committed due to the race, ethnicity, nation or religion,” the Lyon prosecutor’s office told AFP.
At the end of the afternoon on Tuesday, two plainclothes police came out of the Errahma mosque (mercy, in Arabic), a large modern building with light beige walls decorated with windows in Moucharabieh, AFP journalists found.
Mosque managers denounce an “Islamophobic act”
This is a ” Islamophobic act Extremely serious (…) in a context already marked by violence against our community, “denounced those responsible for the Errahma mosque on its website. The LFI deputies of the Rhône Idir Boumertit and Gabriel Amard, like the socialist mayor of Villeurbanne Cédric van Styvendael, also condemned “an Islamophobic act”.
“We ensure our Muslim fellow citizens in the Rhône with all the attention of the state and its support for the hate acts of which they are the target,” the prefect of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Fabienne Buccio, said in a press release, ensuring that they are in contact “with community representatives to take the necessary security measures”.
Invoking an “odious desecration” and a “serious attack on the dignity of the faithful and the fundamental principles of our Republic”, the CMR, the federative body which brings together the Muslim places of worship of the Department of the Rhône, calls on the authorities to “do everything to identify the author of this act and initiate exemplary prosecution”.
An “increasingly hostile climate to citizens of Muslim confession”
The CMR evokes “a series of hateful assaults” and an “increasingly hostile climate to citizens of Muslim confession”, referring to the murder of the young Malian Aboubakar Cissé, killed with 57 stabs on April 25 in the Khadidja mosque of Grande-Combe, in the Gard, and the one on Saturday of a Tunisian shot in Puget-sur-Argensin the Var.
A crime “premeditated”, “clearly racist” and “probably antimusulman”, according to the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau. The national anti -terrorist prosecution (PNAT) has also seized the investigation, leading investigations for the first time on a racist homicide linked to the ultra -right.
The first three months of 2025 recorded an increase in anti -Muslim acts of 72% compared to the same period in 2024, with 79 cases identified, according to a count of the Ministry of the Interior.
