A Black Lives Matter founder who is being heavily courted by the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns said on Wednesday that French police raids on suspects in last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris “seem like witch hunts.”
DeRay McKesson made the observation as French police surrounded an apartment in Saint Denis, a suburb north of Paris, where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the attacks was believed to be holed up.
I want to learn more about the French raids underway. But from what I've read so far, they seem like witch hunts.
— deray mckesson (@deray) November 18, 2015
The standoff ended with two terrorists dead, including Abaaoud and a woman who detonated a suicide vest. Seven others were arrested, and four police officers were injured.
McKesson, who rose to fame as an activist during the Ferguson protests last year, was criticized by some of his 250,000-plus Twitter followers for doubting the purpose of the raid.
I was finally able to read up more on the French raids & now understand the situation better. It seems like they're getting close.
— deray mckesson (@deray) November 18, 2015
McKesson is no stranger to making false and inflammatory statements. He helped spread the now-disproved “Hands up, Don’t shoot” narrative that became a rallying cry during protests following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. In April, as the Freddie Gray case was unfolding in Baltimore, McKesson tweeted that the 25-year-old was “beaten” by police. Gray died while riding in the back of a police van, but an autopsy found no indication that he was beaten by anyone. And in July, McKesson asserted that police officers “murdered” Sandra Bland while she was in jail in Waller Co., Tex. Autopsies conducted on Bland determined her cause of death to be suicide by hanging. (RELATED: All Evidence Suggests Sandra Bland Killed Herself, But Deray McKesson Continues To Claim She Was Murdered)
Despite his being wrong so often, both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns have gone to great lengths to McKesson’s support and that of his growing Black Lives Matter network. Both Democratic candidates met with McKesson and company in separate closed-door meetings last month.