From "Il Messaggero veneto""
PARIS – Bloodshed during the phantasmagorical "White Night," which kept more than 350,000 Parisians awake until dawn between Saturday and Sunday: popular Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe was stabbed by a Muslim man who hates homosexuals in a hall of the glittering city hall. His life is not in danger, but he faces at least eight days in the hospital. A computer technician of Algerian origin, Azedine Berkane, currently unemployed and described by the police as a "practicing Muslim," stabbed him with an eight-centimeter blade. "I hate politicians and homosexuals," he told the Criminal Brigade officers who questioned him all day. The impulse to attack Delanoe apparently came suddenly, "an isolated act, without premeditation.".
The tragedy unfolded around 2:30 a.m., in the packed Hôtel de Ville: Delanoe, as always without bodyguards (he never wanted them), was walking through one of the many crowded and majestic halls when Berkane suddenly, brutally, and disorderly attacked him and stabbed him. Already known to the police for his history of outrage, violence, and drugs, the attacker didn't say a word as he plunged the blade into the room and was promptly subdued by the mayor's aides. Fifty-two years old, openly gay (his "coming out" was in 1998), and mayor of Paris for 18 months, Delanoe remained unconscious. Before being transported to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, he insisted that the "Nuit blanche," a bizarre festival of events, performances, and tours organized at the city's expense in each of the capital's 20 neighborhoods, continue as scheduled until 8 a.m. At Pitiè-Salpietrière, where Princess Diana was hospitalized after the terrible car accident, the mayor of Paris underwent immediate surgery. The stab wound damaged his stomach and digestive tract.
After the operation, which stopped any risk of bleeding, doctors declared him out of danger, but ordered him to be hospitalized for at least eight days. The stabber lives in Bobigny, a troubled area on the outskirts of Paris, and was interrogated for a long time at the Brigade Criminelle headquarters on Quai des Orfevres: at first he remained silent. Then, with extreme terseness, he alluded to his hostility towards politicians and gays. And he denied that his act had been premeditated. He apparently acted impulsively, at the sight of Delanoe heading towards the entrance to ensure that the influx of people (by that point more than 6,000 people had already passed through the Hôtel de Ville) proceeded smoothly. Later that night, the super-Minister of the Interior, Sarkozy, initiator of a zero-tolerance anti-crime strategy that the government claims has already begun to bear fruit, visited Delanoe. President Chirac and Prime Minister Raffarin, for their part, expressed their solidarity with the mayor, who, since his victory in the March 2001 municipal elections, has become one of the most respected and beloved figures on the left. "I am outraged by such a senseless act," Chirac declared.
Despite the drama at the Hôtel de Ville, the Nuit Blanche in Paris was a huge success, as evidenced by the fact that over 350,000 people attended the many "artistic animations.".
