French police have reportedly launched an investigation after the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère claimed to have received death threats for speaking out against the “culture of delinquency” of migrant-background communities following an allegedly anti-white mass stabbing attack last month.
Centrist Les Républicains politician Marie-Hélène Thoraval claimed this week that she was subjected to multiple death threats, including one which vowed to “juggle her skull” after she spoke publicly on the issues of violence within a heavily foreign-background area of her city.
According to French broadcaster BFMTV, police have launched an investigation over “death threats against a person custodian of public authority” after Thoraval filed an official complaint on Wednesday.
The death threats against the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère came just two weeks after a teenage boy named Thomas was stabbed to death and 16 others were left injured as a gang of youths descended upon the nearby village of Crépol, with the reported intent to “stab white people”. It was reported that the young men came from the Monnaie district of Romans-sur-Isère, which has been plagued by issues of violence and drug trafficking in recent years.
Following the attack, Mayor Thoraval has been heavily critical of the “culture of delinquency” within some migrant background families within the district, saying that drug trafficking has become a “family economic model” and that police who try to patrol the area are often attacked by youths throwing stones at police vehicles.
Thoraval was also critical of the government for initially refusing to publish the names of the alleged attackers in Crépol, whom the Le Figaro newspaper noted all had “North African sounding” names. The mayor noted that in the case of the police killing of Nahel, an Algerian-heritage teenager, which sparked nationwide riots, the government was quick to release the information of the officer and the slain teen.
“We had to broadcast these first names, of course! I don’t understand the reluctance there was. At the time of Nahel’s death, the State immediately made it a social fact. The affair immediately took on national proportions. Conversely, Thomas’ death remained a simple news item for too many days, as if the State did not want to see it, and the minute of silence arrived more than a week after the tragedy,” she said.
The mayor has also pointed out that there have been longstanding attempts to reform the area, with “a little more than 150 million euros have been injected since 2014”. However, this has so far failed to curb the drug trafficking or violence in the district, Thoraval said.
Calling for stricter punishment, she said that normal tactics for combatting people with a “minimum of education” are futile against “people who don’t have any – if I use the term of the Minister of the Interior, savages – we need other methods.”
Describing the threats made against her, Thoraval said on Thursday: “I received yesterday morning two anonymous calls that were made to the standard of the town hall with a message that was more of an intimidation message, wondering if I had a Kalashnikov in my house and if I had bodyguards.”
“It went up a notch in the afternoon when at that time I received a private message on Instagram stating that I was expected to be beheaded, that we’d juggle my skull and all that would be done in a month. It is a real threat of death,” she added.
“Since I decided to say out loud what everyone is thinking, I have been under pressure… the anonymous interlocutor claimed that the French were weak. I was called a fascist.”