HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------[As the return of colonialism is openly proclaimed without challenge by senior British government officials, it is interesting to note that the escapism offered to Western losers in the form of colonial adventures is once again on the rise. From the growth of sex-slavery to posh "international" assignments, "where we make more than the locals" (as one would be OSCE employee recently bragged to me), those who fail time and again in the West can find an outlet to exercise their frustrated superiority complexes over repressed peoples elsewhere just like European colonial administrators did in the 19th century. It is no wonder then that the French dude who just shot up 19 people, felt happiest in NATO occupied Kosovo and Bosnia.]
Self-loathing, rancour drove French mass murderer
By Nikla Gibson
PARIS, March 28 (Reuters) - Richard Durn, a former school monitor who gunned down eight people in a Paris suburb council chamber, saw himself as a loser and often talked about killing himself.
Police said Durn, 33, leapt to his death from a window while in custody in the heart of Paris on Thursday, only 33 hours after turning a local council meeting into a bloodbath.
Unemployed, friendless and still living with his mother, Durn had already tried twice to commit suicide. More recently, he decided he wanted to end his days in such a way that he could not be forgotten in death as he felt he had been in life.
In three separate letters sent to acquaintances and left at home, Durn wrote: "I've gone mad, become a drop out and must therefore die."
The amateur marksman blasted away at municipal councillors in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre in the early hours of Wednesday morning, killing eight and wounding another 19 in one of France's worst mass murders.
When he was overpowered, he cried out: "Kill me, kill me."
His mother, a 65-year old Slovenian immigrant who worked as a cleaning lady in the working-class suburb to raise her son and his half-sister, said Durn often spoke of killing people.
"Richard felt worthless, crap, burnt out and a loser. He couldn't bear life any longer," she told the daily Le Parisien. "For him, death was the only solution. But, he didn't want to die alone, he wanted to kill as many people as possible."
A chronic depressive, Durn felt cheated by society.
"The explanation for his act lies in the feeling he had of total personal failure for which he blamed the society in which he lived," Nanterre Public Prosecutor Yves Bot told journalists.
"He said he had been blocked at every turn and used. He wanted to control events, control his life, kill people and then himself."
DISAPPOINTMENT IN LIFE
A good student, Durn first had psychological problems at 16 and was prescribed anti-depressants. He managed to finish university with a history degree but, after failing teaching exams, his life never quite unfolded as he had hoped.
He drifted from job to job and tried in vain to get involved in local affairs and humanitarian causes. He became increasingly obsessed with guns.
Colleagues who knew him from his work in the local Greens Party office or as treasurer of a human rights group described the dark-haired Durn as taciturn.
Pupils at the school where he briefly worked as a monitor teased him as bumbling and anti-social.
His happiest times were said to have been in Kosovo and Bosnia, where he worked for a while as a humanitarian aid worker.
Guns became a fixation. He belonged to a local shooting club and held licenses for the three guns he carried into the fatal council session.
Durn had no criminal record, despite having twice pulled a gun on psychiatrists counselling him. These incidents were never reported to the police.
His mother said he used to practise shooting in the garage. She said he had a quick temper but he never hurt her.
PROFILE OF A MASS MURDERER
Psychiatrists said Durn's life and feelings of worthlessness mirrored the backgrounds of other mass murderers.
"Since this type of person cannot bear his existence as a loser, he seeks to make others responsible for his own failures," criminologist Stephane Bourgoin told Le Parisien.
Difficulties finding a job and a home of his own were cited as possible reasons Durn targeted municipal councillors.
"Monday, it was clear he wasn't quite right. He had a wierd expression, a fixed gaze...the same on Tuesday," his mother said.
"That evening, he just said he was going to the municipal council meeting."
09:39 03-28-02
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