22A long rap sheet
Paris attacker was anti-cop
KARIM CHEURFI — the suspect in Thursday’s shooting attack in Paris — targeted police long before he killed one officer and wounded another, officials said.
Prosecutors said Cheurfi, 39, opened fired on a group of cops at the Champs-Élysées with an AK-47, killing officer Xavier Jugelé. A note praising ISIS and listing security sites fell from his jacket as pursuing police shot and killed him, officials said.
But the deadly attack wasn’t his first run-in with French authorities. Cheurfi did multiple prison stints over the last 15 years for attempted homicide, robbery and other violence-related charges.
Cheurfi had previously been convicted of trying to kill police officers in 2001, officials said Friday, and was sentenced to 20 years. He also once shot and wounded a prison guard after grabbing his gun, Sky News reported.
Cheurfi won an appeal, The Guardian reported, and was released in 2013. His freedom was short-lived as he was back behind bars in 2014 for robbery and sentenced to four more years. He was paroled in 2015.
Jean-Laurent Panier, Cheurfi’s former lawyer, told French channel BFM-TV his client was an “extremely isolated” person and probably needed psychological help. Cheurfi, he added, never discussed religion, and “his only conversations were about how to fill his daily life with video games.”
The resident of the east Paris suburbs was brought in for questioning in February, French prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday. He was taken to a police station outside of Paris after sources said he was “seeking to obtain weapons to kill policemen,” according to The Telegraph.
Cheurfi was later let go, Molins said, due to a lack of evidence he posed a threat.
On Friday, cops raided his home in Chelles and questioned some of his family, which police said is routine.
ISIS has claimed credit for the attack.