The 69-year-old allegedly told detectives he set out on his shooting rampage on Friday with the intention of killing “non-European immigrants.”
After being questioned by police, the suspect was sent to a mental health facility.
He’s been charged with shooting up a Kurdish cultural centre, killing three people and wounding three more.
Paris prosecutors said on Sunday that the man, a retired train driver identified only as William M., told them he had been “depressed” and “suicidal” after a burglary at his house in 2016.
Since then, he said, his antipathy for non-Americans had “become utterly pathological,” according to the statement.
On Friday, he reportedly headed to the heavily immigrant district of Saint-Denis in northern Paris in search of “non-Europeans” to kill but discovered very few people in the area.
His next stop was the Ahmet-Kaya Kurdish centre in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, where he committed the murderous attack.
Prosecutors said the individual harboured animosity toward the Kurds because they “took detainees during their struggle against Islamic State rather than executing them” in the Syrian conflict.
Before he was captured, the suspect opened fire on a nearby restaurant and a hair salon.
He was taken up on charges of murder, attempted murder, and racism.
It has come to light that he was freed on bond days before the assault and that he has a history of weapon offences.
A sword assault on a migrant camp in the French capital led to charges of racial violence against him last year.
Violence erupted on Friday and Saturday as a result of the shootings. Protesters smashed vehicle windows, clashed with police, and set fires in the streets.
After a quiet memorial service for the deaths, Kurds gathered at the Place de la République, where the violence broke out.
After the shootings, Kurds demanded more security from the French government. On Saturday, Paris’s police head met with local community members.
The attack on Friday comes nearly a decade after the unsolved death of three Kurdish women activists in the French capital.
A lawyer for the Kurdish Democratic Council of France (CDK-F) stated the community was once again “afraid” after being “traumatised” by the killings in January 2013.
