The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Letter: Paris attacker hoped to be martyr
Anti-terrorism prosecutor says note resembled a will.
PARIS — The Frenchman killed when he drove a car packed with arms and explosives into a Paris police convoy in a failed attack had pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State and asked his family to remember him as a martyr, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said Thursday.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, citing a letter resembling a will that was dated Monday, the day of the attack on the French capital’s famed Avenue des Champs-Elysees, said the man had pledged his allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and practiced shooting “to prepare for jihad.”
The letter to his loved ones asked that his assault be treated not as a suicide attack but as a “martyrdom operation,” Molins said.
The man, whom the prosecutor identified only as Adam D. — though police officials earlier identified him as 31-year-old Adam Djaziri — had been on the radar of French authorities for Islamic extremism. Molins said Tunisian authorities put out a search warrant for him in 2014 on suspicion of ties to a terrorist group. The prosecutor confirmed that, nevertheless, he had authorization to carry various arms.
The operator of a shooting club told French TV that Adam D. had practiced there.
Such contradictions appear perplexing in a country that has been in a state of emergency since 2015 after multiple deadly terror attacks.
The French government moved Thursday to extend the state of emergency until November and presented to the Cabinet a new security to bill to beef up police powers, one of several pledges by President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron told European newspapers that France must “organize ... for the long term” because the terror threat is lasting.
Monday’s incident was the second time French security forces had been confronted with terrorism on the Champs-Elysees in two months, the prosecutor noted. An officer was killed there in April, and there have been three other instances this year in which French police have been targeted.
Molins said the would-be attacker had a huge cache of weapons both at home and in the vehicle he drove. Two canisters of gas, their safety caps sealed, were found in its back seat. Evidence from the investigation shows the suspect wanted to join Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq, the prosecutor said.
The attack on a sunny day on the tourist-filled avenue was aborted when the car exploded after the driver rammed the lead car in the police convoy, killing himself, Molins said.