Story of gunman all too familiar

Killer Redouane Lakdim was a Moroccan small-time drug dealer. His story seems to follow a grimly familiar pattern in France of disaffected young men progressing from small-time crime to terrorism. Lakdim had been observed for a time by intelligence officers to see if he was at risk of Islamist radicalisation. “We had monitored him and did not think that he had been radicalised,” Gerard Collomb, interior minister, said. Lakdim lived with a partner and his parents and siblings in a council estate apartment on the edge of Carcassonne known as the Cité Ozanam. It was sealed off yesterday as police searched his flat and friends’ homes. The woman who lived him was detained for questioning. Neighbours quoted by French media had only praise for the young man, describing him as a “calm” and “nice” person who regularly attended a mosque.

He also regularly dropped off one of his little sisters to school, a neighbour said. Officials speculated that he had keep his radical leanings quiet or that he had become radicalised recently.

Rory Mulholland