2023-12-03 23:50:28
Still in police custody on Sunday, the radical Islamist who killed a young German-Filipino tourist and injured two other people near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday evening had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group before his act, which raises the question of the psychiatric monitoring of certain jihadists.
The attack occurred a few months before the 2024 Olympics in Paris and less than two months after that of Arras (Pas-de-Calais) which cost the life of a teacher in mid-October and led to the recovery of the Vigipirate plan in maximum “attack emergency” level.
Speaking in Arabic in this video, Armand R.-M., a 26-year-old Franco-Iranian, provided “his support to the jihadists acting in different areas,” declared the anti-terrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, during the a press conference on Sunday evening.
“This video was notably posted online on his X account (formerly Twitter)”, opened at the beginning of October and which included “numerous publications on Hamas, Gaza and more generally Palestine”, according to the magistrate. In addition to the perpetrator, three other people were placed in police custody, belonging to the author’s family or entourage, said Jean-François Ricard.
Several hammer and knife blows
The events took place on Saturday around 9:30 p.m. in this highly touristy place in the capital, near the Bir-Hakeim bridge spanning the Seine.
The stabbed tourist, aged 23, was of German and Filipino nationality, and had two other people of Filipino origin. He received “two hammer blows and four stab wounds,” said the magistrate.
The assailant repeatedly shouted “Allah akbar” and declared that he was “equipped with an explosive belt”, according to the anti-terrorism prosecutor. He also attacked, with a hammer, two men, a 60-year-old Frenchman and a 66-year-old British man, who were slightly injured.
He was subdued by the police using an electric pulse gun shortly after the attack and placed in police custody in the premises of the anti-terrorist section (SAT) of the Paris criminal brigade. The investigation is open for “assassination and attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and “conspiracy of terrorist criminals with a view to preparing crimes against people”.
The attacker “withdrew into himself”
The attacker’s mother had informed the authorities that she was worried about her son who was “withdrawing into himself”, he stressed. “Coming from a family without any religious commitment”, Armand R.-M. converted to Islam at the age of 18, in 2015, and “very quickly” fell into “jihadist ideology”.
“The creation of this account Investigators are seeking in particular to determine when the weapons for the attack were purchased.
Listed for Islamist radicalization (FSPRT), according to a source close to the investigation, he was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing an act of terrorism, after a planned violent action at Defense, in 2016. He was released from prison in 2020 after four years of detention.
A psychiatric profile that raises questions
Investigators will now look into the medical follow-up of the author, a man with a “very unstable profile, very easily influenced”, according to a security source interviewed by AFP.
“The development of certain psychiatric disorders already noted during his detention led the PNAT to require the carrying out of a new psychiatric assessment,” recalled Jean-François Ricard at a press conference.
“Following the latter, the author was subject to a treatment order involving strict psychiatric monitoring and controlled by a coordinating doctor. This monitoring was effective until the end of the probation on April 26, 2023,” he added.
The authorities must be able to request “an injunction for care”, demands Darmanin
Gérald Darmanin demanded on Sunday evening that the authorities “can request an order for care” for a radicalized person being monitored for psychiatric disorders in order to prevent acts of violence, following an interministerial meeting in Matignon.
The attacker “is an adherent of radical Islam and he is psychiatrically ill. He had stopped treatment at the request of certain doctors,” recalled the minister. “What undoubtedly needs to change – we saw it around the Prime Minister (Élisabeth Borne) – is that the public authorities, the prefects, the police can request, require an order for care, which does not This is not the case today,” he continued.
Stressing that the “police officers were not doctors”, he argued that they had “to manage people with psychotic disorders and adherents to radical Islam”. The minister insisted that France was “permanently under the influence of the radical Islamist threat”. “We must have an extremely firm criminal response,” he said.
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