Alleged killer of tourist in Paris attack had pledged allegiance to Islamic State
A 26-year-old man suspected of killing a German-Filipino tourist and wounding two others near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday night had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video released online.
The French anti-terrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, said the French suspect, named as Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, “had recorded a video before committing the act”, in which he spoke in Arabic, swore allegiance to Islamic State and supported its jihadists in different areas from Africa to Iraq, Syria and Pakistan.
The video was posted online on his account on the social network X, which also showed numerous posts on Hamas, Gaza and Palestine. The account was started at the beginning of October.
The suspect was still being questioned by police on Sunday night after he is alleged to have stabbed the German-Filipino tourist to death and wounded two others – one British, one French.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab, who had served four years in prison for planning a radical Islamist attack before being released in 2020, had been monitored by the intelligence services for “persistent radicalisation”, Ricard said, and had undergone psychiatric treatment.
Born in 1997 in the affluent town of Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris, Rajabpour-Miyandoab was born to parents of Iranian origin, in a family described by the prosecutor as having “no religious engagement”. He converted to Islam aged 18 in 2015 and very quickly fell into “jihadist ideology, consulting videos and propaganda and making links to jihadists active in Iraq and Syria”, the prosecutor said.
At the end of October this year, his mother had said she was concerned by his behaviour as he was “closed in on himself”.
The attack took place about 9.30pm near the Bir Hakeim bridge in an area popular with tourists. France is on its highest alert for attacks against the background of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The prosector said the alleged attacker first targeted three people of Filipino origin near the bridge, dealing hammer-blows and stab wounds to a 23-year-old man who was a GermanFilipino citizen. A passing taxi driver intervened to stop the attacker, but the suspect shouted Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) and ran away across the bridge to the other side of the River Seine. As police gave chase, he shouted “Allahu Akbar” at officers, telling them he was wearing a belt of explosives. As he ran, pursued by police, he struck two more people in the head with a hammer – a 66-year-old British man and a 60-year-old French national. Both suffered superficial physical injuries and were treated in hospital.
The suspect then hid in a nearby square and police used a stun gun to stop him.
Patrick Pelloux, an emergency doctor on duty at the time of the attack, said the man who died was a nurse. The two people who had been with him were still being treated for shock in a French hospital on Sunday night.
The UK Foreign Office said it was “supporting a British man who was injured in Paris and are in contact with the local authorities”, the BBC reported.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, sent his condolences to the family of the German citizen killed in what he called a “terrorist attack”. He thanked security forces for their quick arrest of the suspected attacker and said justice should be served “in the name of the French people”.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was “shocked by the terrorist attack in Paris”, saying it underlined the need to resolutely oppose hatred and terror.
The German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, condemned what she called an “abominable” crime, telling interviewers from the Funke media group that Berlin’s security services were “working closely” with Paris.
“The war in Gaza after Hamas’s terrorist act [of 7 October] has worsened the threat,” Faeser said, warning that “the threat of Islamist terrorism is acute and serious”.
“We will not give in to terrorism,” the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, wrote on X after the Paris attack. Borne held a special security meeting with ministers on Sunday afternoon.
Three other people from the suspect’s family and entourage were being questioned by police on Sunday night.
The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, visited the scene, telling reporters that the alleged attacker was known to authorities for radical Islamism.
Darmanin said the man had said France was “complicit” in “what Israel is doing in Gaza”.
The French health minister, Aurélien Rousseau, said the suspect was “being monitored in a way that did not mean he was being hospitalised, he was supposed to follow a course of treatment” for psychiatric issues.
“As often in these cases, there’s a mixture of an ideology, an easily influenced person and, unfortunately, psychiatry,” Rousseau added.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab lived with his parents in the Essonne area, south of Paris. French media reported that when he was arrested in 2016 he had been a 19-year-old biology student and was accused of planning a violent attack in the business district, La Défense, west of Paris, which he failed to carry out. He was subsequently sentenced in 2018 and released from prison in 2020.
Jordan Bardella, the president of
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, which is the largest single opposition party in parliament, said: “French people will be asking how a man on a [watchlist], already convicted for having planned an attack, who was a notorious psychiatric case – how could he, in the current context, be able to walk freely and armed through Paris streets on a Saturday night. And French people would be right to ask this question.”
The country has suffered several terrorist attacks in the past decade, including the November 2015 suicide and gun attacks in Paris claimed by the Islamic State group in which 130 people were killed.
In October, a 20-year-old terrorist suspect who had been under surveillance walked into his old high school in Arras, northern France, stabbed to death a French teacher, Dominique Bernard, and injured three others. The 57year-old died from several wounds to the neck.
Tensions have risen in France, home to large Jewish and Muslim populations, since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.