Paris airport attacker had multiple terms in prison

Apost-mortem was being carried out yesterday to determine whether a suspected Islamic extremist was drunk or on drugs when he took a soldier hostage at Orly Airport in Paris and was shot dead by her fellow patrolmen.

The suspect, Ziyed Ben Belgacem, stopped at a bar in the early hours of Saturday morning, about four hours before he first fired birdshot at traffic police.

Ninety minutes later he attacked the military patrol at Orly, causing the shutdown of the French capital’s second-biggest airport. A subsequent police search of his flat found cocaine, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

In a French radio interview yesterday, a man identified as the suspect’s father said Belgacem was not a practising Muslim.

“My son was never a terrorist. He never attended prayer. He drank. But under the effects of alcohol and cannabis, this is where one ends up,” said the father, who was not named.

Belgacem’s father was released from police custody overnight. His brother and a cousin were still being questioned.

In a news conference late Saturday, Molins said Belgacem called his father and brother early that morning, minutes after he fired birdshot at a police traffic patrol, injuring an officer in the face, to say that he had made a stupid mistake.

“He said, ‘there you go, Papa’, he was extremely angry, even his mother couldn’t understand him,” the father said in the radio interview.

“He told me, ‘I ask for your forgiveness. I’ve screwed up with a gendarme’.”

The 39-year-old Frenchman had a long criminal record, with multiple jail terms for drugs and robbery.

Molins said Belgacem was out on bail, banned from leaving France and obliged to report regularly to police, having been handed preliminary charges for robberies in 2016.

He was also flagged as having been radicalised in detention from 2011-12, Molins said.