Frenchman killed couple for ISIL, officials say
Lone wolf attack broadcast on Facebook
PARIS • A Frenchman who murdered a police commander and his partner live on Facebook claimed he was answering ISIL’s call for lone wolf attacks in Ramadan, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Larossi Abballa, a 25-yearold known to French security services, also reportedly warned that the Euro 2016 football tournament taking place in France would become a “graveyard.”
In a 12-minute broadcast, Abballa pledged allegiance to ISIL, saying he was heeding the Islamist terror group’s call to “kill infidels in their homes with their families,” prosecutors said.
He did so using Facebook Live, a new application that allows users to stream video live to their followers, raising fears that terrorists will increasingly turn to such online streaming to broadcast their crimes in real time.
The savage attack late on Monday night in Magnanville, a suburb of Paris, came barely a day after another ISIL-inspired gunman killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in the deadliest shooting in modern American history.
Abballa repeatedly knifed the 42-year-old commander, named as Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, in the stomach outside his home.
He then barricaded himself inside the house, taking the policeman’s partner, Jessica Schneider, 36, and three-year-old son hostage. Schneider, a police administrator, was found dead in the house with her throat cut.
The boy was unharmed but in “total shock,” officials said. He was taken to a children’s hospital.
The video, posted online as police surrounded the house, showed the suspect next to his victims. “I don’t know what to do with him,” the man is heard saying of the boy.
According to David Thompson, an expert on jihadism who saw the video, Abballa then warned, “We are going to turn the Euros into a graveyard,” referring to the tournament that kicked off on June 6 amid massive security.
After warning officers that he would blow the house up if they moved in, Abballa was finally shot dead at midnight by members of an elite police unit.
He had shown “absolutely no sign of negotiating,” a spokesman said.
Police found a hit list that included “rappers, journalists, police and public figures,” according to Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor. They also found three phones and knives, one covered in blood. In a nearby car was a Qur’an and a white djellaba, a Moroccan robe.
Three men aged 27, 29 and 44 were detained for questioning.