Talk:2014 Dijon attack

Describing the UCL academic article

I added the following to the page" "The attack is described by Emily Corner and Paul Gil, both of University College London, in their 2017 article, Is there a Nexus Between Terrorist Involvement and Mental Health in the Age of the Islamic State?" This article lists all attacks by Islamic extremists in Europe that the authors could discover that had taken place between May 2014 and September 2016. But it discusses and describes the details of only a few of those attacks. The discussion of this 2014 attack in Dijon is one of the lengthier descriptions in the article, a very interesting analysis of assertions made by authorities and/or by the media and by acquaintances of sundry attackers and the complexity of attributing causaiton to mental illness and to ideological inspiration. User:Pincrete, your recent change from "described" to "listed" is inaccurate and misleading. I reverted it. If you read the article, you will understand why I use describe and reverted "listed".E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:03, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

E.M.Gregory, having read the document, I find only a single 'mention' of Dijon: on December 21, 2015, an unnamed 40-year-old ran over 11 pedestrians across the city of Dijon, France, while shouting “Allahu akbar,” claiming he was “acting on behalf of the children of Palestine,” and brandishing a knife. Police knew the assailant for previous minor offenses, and he had spent time in psychiatric services. Due to the psychiatric history of the assailant, authorities deemed the attack not to be an act of terrorism. This is less info than our lead, and only slightly longer than the description of their 'research' quoted by you.

If they say anything of note about Dijon, why is what they say about it, (rather than the mere fact that they say something), not in the article? Their only 'reference' is a BBC article on which they base their 'conclusions'. Nowhere is anything said about Dijon which is not sourced (by them) to a standard BBC news item (their footnote 48). Pincrete (talk) 15:07, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

• Please go back and actually read the section you are citing. My point is not only that the article has both a list, on which this is attack is included, and a section headed "The Circumstantial Evidence Base", in which a selection of the incidents listed are described, including the segment you quote. What you omit is the lede sentence of that discussion: "In many other cases, when confirmed diagnosis were present, there was a tendency to try to dismiss the possibility of terrorism altogether. For example, on December 21, 2014, an unarmed 40-year-old ran over....", which is an example of WP:SIGCOV in an academic source. Your omission of this significant par of the discussion is highly misleading. I will now improve the statement on the page by including this sentence.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:22, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

When confirmed diagnosis is present, there is always an inevitable discounting of "terrorism". It is a fundamental principle of most legal systems that beyond a certain point, the mentally ill are not legally culpable. These researchers are saying nothing other than that Fr psychologists deemed this individual to be not legally culpable. They say nothing whatsoever about this attack, nor the perp, they did not access the accused nor his medical papers. What you are seeking to imply is that they/you know more about the threshold of criminal culpability than medical experts who actually examined the individual. Pincrete (talk) 15:38, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

• Pincrete, you appear to be unaware of a number of facts. First, the fact that culpability has to be adjudicated. What happened here is an administrative side-stepping of the ajudication process. and, second, the fact that there is a rapidly burgeoning of both an academic and a journalistic literature accusing the French government of sidestepping the judicaiton process in possibly terrorism-related crimes for political ends, a literature that is paralleled by a heated political and popular conversation. It is the fact that this conversation is so significant that makes this article notable. You, of coruse, are taking an extremely POV position here. I strongly advise you to read sources you cite more carefully and to learn something about both the insantiy defense and the political conversation surrounding this issue in France.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:45, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

The 'side-stepping' is your own invention. A passing comment by two academics that the 'diagnosis' happened quickly. Nowhere does the source claim that Fr authorities "got it wrong" about the diagnosis, they could hardly do so when their only source on this was a BBC news report and neither has any expertise on psychology or Fr law and no contact with the accused or his medical history. Nowhere do they accuse the Fr Gov't of anything at all. Their main conclusions are fairly bland and are about 100 attacks, not Dijon.

What procedure is in Fr law for deciding who is mentally fit or unfit to be held culpaple is something neither I nor - I suspect - you, know anything at all about. As usual it does not stop you inventing a narrative - and significance - that the 4 lines of the researchers simply does not support.

My PoV is that we do not invent our own narratives that this was really terrorism and then distort brief, bland accounts by academics to support that narrative. Pincrete (talk) 17:59, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

• the authors of this article state plainly that his attack is an example of the tendency to try to dismiss the possibility of terrorism altogether in cases like this where confirmed diagnosis exists. That is the analysis of these two academics in a WP:RS it is NOT in the news media account they cite on their summary of the facts of the case. Please do not willfully misunderstand the fact that an individual can simultaneously be mentally ill and be inspired to commit a crime by an ideology. but the point is that this a WP:RS discussion of an aspect of this vehicle ramming attack.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:07, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is an extremely good source about the link between mental illness and 'lone-wolves'. It probably would be useful on the lone-wolf article, it says nothing about Dijon that is not already better sourced. Strangely, quotes like this haven't found their way into the article:

It is worth noting that some of those with overt mental health problems may not have been inspired by the Islamic State but were simply professing Allahu akbar because it is well recognized as a phrase used in violent attacks. As these cases were dismissed as not being terrorism, there was barely any (in many cases no) further media reporting as to the individual’s intentions, and therefore, the degree to which they were truly Islamic State inspired is not currently known.

Far from questioning the Fr narrative about Dijon or other events, it is clear that overall, they are saying "we don't know" what the intersection between mental health and terrorism may be, maybe ill people are just shouting the slogan, maybe it is to a degree terrorist. Pincrete (talk) 20:18, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Response to prev. Well yes, they wish that the intersection between mental health and terrorism was studied, because that is their area of interest. They nowhere suggest Dijon was 'terrorist', nor that Fr authorities 'sidestepped' anything, nor do they offer any other diagnosis. In short, they say nothing about Dijon that is not a summary of a standard BBC report.Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

• Pincrete makes several substantial errors. First, his allegation that "I find only a single 'mention' of Dijon" is obviously wrong, as the Dijon attack is mentioned not only in the body of the article, but also (and critically!) included on the "Attacks Possibly Influenced by the Islamic State and Psychological Instability" table. This (otherwise apparently trivial) oversight evidences that he may not properly have read the article. Second, and most damning, he subsequently focuses on a highly simplistic reading of the article:
  
  «Their only 'reference' is a BBC article on which they base their 'conclusions'. Nowhere is anything said about Dijon which is not sourced (by them) to a standard BBC news item (their footnote 48)».
  
  That's beside the point! The scholarly article's point is not to build a bibliographical dossier of "allahu akbar" terrorists (such as the Dijon attacker), but to explain that the relationship between mental illness and Islamic State terrorism is multidimensional and, as the researches say, «in fact, far more complex than typically presented». In fact, the researches go onto writing: «Just because a factor (such as mental disorder) was present, does not make it causal»; and beseech readers to avoid the «now often the “go-to” explanation» of mental health «by media, the public and policymaker communities hungry for intuitively appealing and straightforward answers». XavierItzm (talk) 07:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

a) It's also mentioned in the index, let's not forget that, being mentioned in an index is irrefutable proof of lasting significance! b) If what you said were true, the info would belong on the 'lone wolf' or similar article. Luckily, no one is going to read this article since it is such a mass of valueless, much of it amateur, speculation which could easily be summarised to a sentence or two. Pincrete (talk) 09:43, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

"the first Isis-linked attacks" in France?

The above quote (from the FT?) is in the lead and in the body, the text it is from is: Three months later, as many French citizens began their Christmas holidays, the first Isis-linked attacks began: three policemen were stabbed in Tours, and two vehicles rammed into crowds of pedestrians in Dijon and Nantes.

The usual 'rule of thumb' is that anything in the lead should be expanded in the article body, that is not the case here as the claim is simply repeated in the body that 'Dijon' along with 'Tours' and 'Nantes' were the "the first Isis-linked attacks" in France". I've queried on the AfD the use of this quote, NOT because it is not RS, but because neither our article nor the orig FT piece appears to make clear in what sense "Isis-linked". Was any tangible 'link' to ISIS uncovered? Not that I know of (apart from possibly a black flag on the accused's computer). Did 'browsing habits' or somesuch indicate the accused's exposure to ISIS propaganda? Not as far as I know. So what does it mean? Does it simply mean that media at the time speculated about the possibility of an ISIS link, if so we are simply recycling second-hand speculation as though it were useful fact.

I cannot access the whole article (££), but unless it can be made clear what the FT thinks the 'link' was, I don't think we should be using this text, (certainly not repeating it in the lead), since it implies much but actually imparts no useful information. Pincrete (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Multiple RS link the two ramning attacks in Dec 2014 to an ISIS video calling for ramming attacks published just before the attacks.Icewhiz (talk) 05:41, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

If that is the case (and I don't have time to look now), we should SAY that, otherwise the claim is vague to the point of being meaningless. Pincrete (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Recent edit

Preserving here by providing this link; the edits focused on removing commentary from the lead and making it more WP:BLP compliant and factual. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:42, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

More reductions from the "Motivation" section diff. Material removed was non-expert commentary and suppositions and I found it undue for a BLP. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:07, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

This is the stuff that coff deleted on 1 November:
The alleged perpetrator shouted the Islamic takbir Allahu Akbar ("God is Great"); he had a record of mental disorder and no known links with terrorist groups. According to the Globe and Mail the attack was "apparently inspired by a video" circulated by ISIL calling on French Muslims to attack non-Muslims using vehicles. The attack is been discussed as an incident categorized by French authorities as being caused by mental-illness, but by terrorism experts including David Martin Jones of the University of Queensland as lone wolf terrorism inspired by Islamist propaganda.
This deletion is entirely arbitrary, unnecessary, and should be restored. XavierItzm (talk) 07:06, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

It is not deleted, it is simply moved out of the lead. Pincrete (talk) 08:30, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

This is factually incorrect. Al references to David Martin Jones of the University of Queensland have been blanked out.XavierItzm (talk) 09:03, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

The Jones was uncited, essentially the same claim is now attributed to 'Globe and Mail'. I'm sure Jones's name could be added to those making the claim if a ref is found. K.e.coffman was right to remove an unsourced claim, especially as it simply duplicated existing info.

Actuall, "The Jones" (as you say) was well sourced, here in an edit by E.M.Gregory. Per WP:PRESERVE, editors should be careful about wantonly deleting well-sourced material. XavierItzm (talk) 12:35, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

• It is POV to remove this information from the lede. A great deal of attention has been focused on this attack as an example of a tendency among French officials to minimize terrorism by ruling many attacks in which the attacker was BOTH influenced by jihadist ideas AND under treatment for some sort of mental health issue as "mental illness" but not radicalization. The disputed nature of the government claim belongs in the lede, which is supposed to summarize the main points of the article.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:53, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Errr you've lost me. How on earth is there a contradiction between someone being mentally ill and that person possibly having been inspired by a video, whether that video be a documentary (as appears to be the case here) or Donald Duck? Does it 'prove' something IYO? Does Jones say that the French authorites "got the diagnosis wrong"? Did he have any access to the perp or the evidence? What is his rationale? You appear to be justifying the text on SYNTH grounds if you are simply trying to infer from the Jones comment that French authorities 'got it wrong'.

I have seen no evidence of "a great deal of attention" having been focused on "a tendency among French officials to minimize terrorism" as a mental health matter, merely cherrypicking of a handful of quotes which can just about be interpreted that way. There is one substantive book I believe making that accusation about other cases. I don't know the book and don't know how seriously it should be taken. What difference does it make however? It would be useful to many to know more about this case, but if competent authorities have ruled that the man is not fit to stand trial, what point is there in holding one? (I would expect something better than passing comments from wholly unqualified 'onlookers', to refute this eg actually having examined the man and the evidence). The French it seems don't conduct "trial by media, half a globe away". Hooray for them! Pincrete (talk) 21:45, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

References