The shooting late on Saturday in Puget-sur-Argens, in the southern region of Var, came after a Malian man was stabbed to death in April in a mosque, also in southern France, as concern grows over hate crimes against Muslims.
But French national anti-terror prosecutors, known by their French acronym PNAT, announced on Monday that they would be taking over the investigation.
The suspected killer, a Frenchman born in 1971, fled the scene in a car but was arrested not far away after his partner alerted police.
The victim, who was born in 1979, was shot five times. The Turkish national was wounded in the hand and needed hospital treatment, the prosecutor said.
The suspect, a sports shooting enthusiast, “posted two videos on his social media account containing racist and hateful content before and after his attack”, the prosecutor said.
The PNAT prosecutors said on Monday that they had opened an investigation into a “terrorist plot” motivated by the race or religion of the victims.
“This tragedy echoes a series of racist crimes that have occurred in recent months,“ it said, denouncing a “poisonous climate” in the country including the “trivialisation of racist rhetoric”.
A French national of Bosnian origin accused of carrying out the attack surrendered to Italian authorities after three days on the run. Italy then extradited him to France to face justice.
On Monday, Retailleau denounced the murder of a Tunisian man, calling it a “racist act”.
“Every racist act is an anti-French act.”
He later spoke to his Tunisian counterpart, Khaled Nouri, who “condemned a terrorist crime”, according to an official government statement.
Nouri urged French authorities to “ensure the protection of the Tunisian community on French territory”, the Tunisian statement added.
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