THE FRENCH ARE WEIRD

I always thought of the French as being one of the more civilised nations of the world.
Don’t ask me why.
I just did.

A recent news article forced me review that perception.

As I regressed through the history lessons in the dusty archives of my mind, visions of Marie Antoinette, and much later, French colonialism and its related atrocities started popping up.

Still, I was taken aback by reports of Nicolas's behaviour, and I am not just talking about Anelka.

39 year-old Nicolas Cocaign was awaiting trial for attempted armed robbery.
This week though, Cocaign, whose repeated appeals to the prison authorities for psychiatric treatment fell on deaf ears, appeared in court in the northern city of Rouen, accused of murder and cannibalism.

After punching and kicking cellmate Thierry Baudry, Cocaign stabbed him in the chest with a pair scissors and then suffocated him with a rubbish bag. He then sliced open Baudry’s chest with a razor, removed a rib and pulled out an organ that he believed to be the man’s heart, but was in fact a lung. Cociagn then ate part of the lung raw, before frying the rest of it with some onions in a makeshift cooker in the cell in Rouens prison. "I wanted to take his soul." Explained Cocaign to an investigative judge. I’m telling you ‘The French are weird.”

 

Kader Khan