France says knife killer was Tunisian

The man who fatally stabbed two young women in Marseilles was a Tunisian who had lived in Italy, France’s interior minister said yesterday.

Interior minister Gerard Collomb said on France-Inter radio that the assailant had Italian residency and a valid Tunisian passport. He was killed by soldiers after Sunday’s stabbings, which were claimed by ISIL.

Mr Collomb urged more information sharing among governments about such cases.

One of the seven IDs the attacker had used in encounters with French police was a Tunisian passport identifying him as Ahmed H.

A judicial official said yesterday that authorities had determined that was the man’s true identity.

Italian news agency Ansa said prosecutors in Rome had opened a terrorism investigation into the attacker’s contacts in Italy, after reports emerged that he had lived in Aprilia, south of Rome, from about 2006 to 2014. Italian daily newspaper La

Repubblica reported that he lived in an area with a sizable Tunisian community, and had married, then divorced, an Italian woman.

Four people have been expelled from Italy for alleged radicalisation-related reasons,

La Repubblica said. Citing state security, Italy has since 2015 expelled more than 200 people who were suspected of radicalising others or recruiting would-be fighters – offences that would not necessarily hold up in court but which the interior ministry used as reason to throw them out.

Mr Collomb said he had ordered an investigation into why the Marseilles attacker was not expelled from the country despite having seven encounters with French police and holding no residency papers.

The man’s latest arrest was two days before the stabbing, when he was picked up for shoplifting and released.