One week after the killing of 22-year-old Aboubakar Cissé inside a mosque in La Grand-Combe (Gard), his family is preparing to file a formal complaint seeking recognition of the attack as an act of terrorism.
In an interview with a French media outlet on Thursday, the family’s lawyers, Yassine Bouzrou and Mourad Battikh, announced plans to become civil parties in the case based on that legal qualification. They criticized authorities for failing to acknowledge the terrorist nature of the attack in the current legal proceedings.
According to Bouzrou, the absence of such a designation is “incomprehensible” given the circumstances. He argues that “the aggressor’s brutality toward a man he did not know” points to a motive far beyond simple homicide. The attorney also stressed that the manner in which the act was carried out was clearly intended to instill fear: “Everything was done to shock anyone who discovered the body, viewed footage from the mosque, or learned the details of the attack.”
The legal team contends that these facts amount to a clear attempt to “seriously disrupt public order through intimidation or terror”—a key criterion for the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) to take over the case.