Friend of Paris knife attacker charged, two women held

PARIS: A friend of the man who carried out a deadly knife attack in Paris was charged Thursday with ‘associating with criminal terrorists’ while two women were detained for questioning as the investigation gathers speed.

Khamzat Azimov, a 20-yearold naturalised Frenchman of Chechen origin, killed one man and injured five others in the busy Opera district of the French capital on Saturday night before being shot dead by police. The Islamic State group has claimed the attack.

Abdul Hakim A, also a Chechenborn French national, was detained Sunday in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where the two men grew up, and charged with “associating with criminal terrorists with plans to attack people,” a judicial source said.

Both men, who were close friends, had appeared on French terror watch lists, although neither had a prior criminal record.

“He has denied any implication in either preparing or carrying out the acts as well as any recent links with Khamzat Azimov, claiming not to have seen or been in contact with him for several months,” France’s top anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins said.

But he added that examinations of telephone networks showed that shortly before the attack, Hakim A has sent his sister a text message of ‘a jihadist chant regularly used by the Islamic State’.