Paris knife attacker was on terror watchlist

PARIS: The knifeman who killed one man and wounded four other people in Paris had been on an antiterror watchlist of suspected extremists, sources close to the inquiry said.

The Frenchman, born in 1997 in the Russian republic of Chechnya, was on the socalled “S file” of people suspected of radicalised views who could pose security risks, the sources said, though he did not have a criminal record.

Police shot and killed the man shortly after being alerted to the attack on the Rue Monsigny, a lively neighbourhood of theatres and restaurants near the main opera house in Paris.

Witnesses said they heard the man yelling “God is greatest” as people fled the scene.

His parents have been taken into custody. Investigators have not yet said when the man arrived in France.

Many but not all of the people on France’s S file (the “S” stands for security) have been involved in the series of deadly militant attacks that have killed some 245 people across the country since 2015.

The watchlist contains any suspected radical, including potentially dangerous religious extremists but also leftist and farright activists.

A separate list, the File for the Prevention of Terrorist Radicalisation (FSPRT), focuses on people judged to be terror threats.

That list currently has nearly 20,000 people, of whom about half are under active surveillance.

Earlier, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters the injured were out of danger.

“I have seen the person who was seriously injured and is now better,” he said after visiting the victims in hospital.

France “will not yield an inch to the enemies of freedom”, President Emmanuel Macron said shortly after the attack, praising police officers for “neutralising the terrorist”.