Paris attack suspect has pledged allegiance to ISIS, prosecutor says

The main suspect in an attack that killed one tourist and injured two other people in Paris was known to French intelligence services for Islamist extremism and had pledged allegiance to Islamic State before the attack, French authorities said Sunday.

Jean-François Ricard, France’s top counterterrorism prosecutor, said at a news conference in Paris that the suspect had shown “persistent radicalization,” had a previous conviction for terrorism and had had online contact with jihadists responsible were for terrorist attacks in France.

But the suspect, identified as Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, also suffers from psychiatric disorders, and authorities had discovered no imminent plans to carry out an attack despite a recent warning from the suspect’s mother, Mr. Ricard.

Saturday’s attack exposed not only the difficulty in monitoring suspected extremists with mental health problems, but also the challenges that President Emmanuel Macron’s government faces as it tries to reassure the world that the 2024 Summer Olympics will take place in Paris will be safe.

In a sign of how seriously authorities were treating this episode, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne oversaw a special cabinet meeting on Sunday “to provide a full update on the security arrangements in place, the treatment of the most dangerous individuals and the aftermath of this fatal situation.” attack,” her office said.

The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, told TF1 television on Sunday that the country was under “sustainable threat from Islamist terrorism” but said it would be ready to host the Olympics. This includes an opening ceremony on the Seine that critics say will be extremely difficult to achieve.

Macron’s government says tens of thousands of security forces will be deployed during the event, and Mr Darmanin said areas near the opening ceremony will be largely cordoned off, with tight security and very limited access “so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen.”

France was hit by large-scale Islamist terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, and then a series of smaller but deadly shootings and stabbings in subsequent years. The country has been on the highest alert level since October, when a teacher was murdered in northern France.

The French government says police and intelligence services have foiled more than 40 attack plans since 2017, but the terrorist threat is particularly acute now due to the war between Hamas and Israel.

The man killed in Saturday’s attack, a 23-year-old German tourist of Filipino descent, was hit twice with a hammer and four times with a knife by Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab near the Eiffel Tower, the official said. Mr Ricard, the prosecutor.

As police chased him, the suspect slightly injured two other people, a Frenchman and a British national, with the hammer, Mr Ricard said. Confronted by police, he claimed he was carrying an explosive belt. That turned out not to be the case; He was arrested after an officer subdued him with a stun gun, authorities said.

In a video recorded before the attack, Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab, speaking in Arabic, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, used a name to introduce himself that referred to the Islamic State in Afghanistan and expressed his support out for jihadists all over the world. said Ricard. The video was published on X, formerly Twitter, from an account opened last month that contained numerous messages referring to Hamas and the war in Gaza, the prosecutor said.

Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab and three family members and associates remain in police custody for questioning, Mr. Ricard said.

Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab was born in 1997 into a non-religious family, but he converted to Islam in 2015 and “very quickly embraced the jihadist ideology,” Mr. Ricard said. In 2018, he was convicted on charges of participating in a criminal conspiracy in preparation of a terrorist attack that was not carried out.

At the time, Mr. Ricard said, investigators determined that Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab had “widely consulted” propaganda videos and documents distributed by Islamic State online and that he had expressed a desire to join the group in 2016 Syria or Iraq. . Investigators also found that Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab had contacted other Islamist extremists online, including some who later became infamous for their own attacks.

Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab befriended on Facebook the man who later killed an off-duty police officer and his partner at their home near Paris, Mr. Ricard said, although the two men did not exchange messages. Mr Rajabpour-Miyandoab also chatted online with one of the attackers in the attack that killed a priest at his church in Normandy. said Mr. Ricard. After his release from prison in 2020, Mr Rajabpour-Miyandoab also had contact with the man who later murdered Samuel Paty, a French history teacher.

His release from prison came under strict conditions, Mr Ricard said, including an order to undergo psychiatric treatment. He also said the treatment stopped in April 2023, although intelligence agencies continued to monitor Mr. Rajabpour-Miyandoab.

Mr Darmanin, the interior minister, told TF1 on Sunday that Mr Rajabpour-Miyandoab’s treatment had been stopped at the request of “certain doctors”, but did not elaborate. He argued that security services should be able to overrule doctors in certain cases to force suspected extremists with psychiatric disorders — “there are many,” he said — to undergo treatment.

In October, Mr.’s mother expressed Rajabpour-Miyandoab expresses her concerns about her son’s increasing withdrawal, but the security services had no grounds to bring charges against him, Mr. Ricard said.

“These are the individuals who are always the hardest to track,” said Laurent Nuñez, head of the Paris police. told BFMTV on Sunday. “Because you have a background of radicalization, and you have psychiatric disorders that muddy the waters and make it harder for intelligence agencies to analyze.”