I’m there to die by Allah, said attacker before grabbing gun
A RADICALISED Muslim known to intelligence agencies was shot dead at Paris Orly airport yesterday after seizing an air force patrolwoman’s gun just hours after he shot a police officer in a northern suburb.
The man was named as Ziyed Ben Belgacem, a 39-year-old French national of north African origin, born in Paris, with a criminal record for drug offences and robbery.
During the confrontation at the airport, Belgacem is said to have shouted at the patrolmen: “I’m there to die by Allah. In any case there will be deaths.”
Belgacem’s father, brother and cousin were taken into custody when they went voluntarily to a police station after he sent a text message to his brother, saying: “I’ve done something stupid. I’ve fired at police.”
Belgacem is believed to have been radicalised in prison, and was wanted for questioning. Yesterday morning, carrying a Koran and a container of petrol in a backpack, he hurled himself at three air force personnel patrolling a passenger terminal under counter-terrorism measures introduced after the 2015 Paris attacks.
He wrestled the patrolwoman to the ground and tried to snatch her assault rifle, grabbing her around the neck and dragging her into a fast-food outlet as she clung on to the gun. He managed to prise it out of her grasp before two servicemen on patrol with her shot him three times when he ignored their demands to surrender.
The incident at the South terminal happened near passengers queuing to check in for a flight to Tel Aviv.
President François Hollande, who visited the airport a few hours later, paid tribute to “the exceptional courage and the conduct of the security forces who made sure the individual was not able to do harm”.
Orly airport, the second largest serving the French capital, was packed with thousands of travellers, who were escorted out. Flights were cancelled or re-routed while bomb disposal squads with sniffer dogs searched the airport. Yasmine, an airport employee, described scenes of panic after shots rang out. “People were rushing around in all directions. It was chaos for a few minutes until people were evacuated.”
Belgacem, who was on a terror watch list, had earlier opened fire with a pellet gun on police who stopped his car in the northern suburb of Gargeslès-Gonnesse. An officer was hit in the face, but the injuries were not lifethreatening.
Police returned fire but Belgacem managed to flee, abandoning the car, a white Renault Clio, roughly 15 miles away in the southern suburb of Vitrysur-Seine. He burst into a café in Vitry, threatened customers and staff, and hijacked a woman’s car at gunpoint. He then drove it to the nearby airport.
Belgacem first came to the attention of the authorities in the Nineties when he was involved in a series of bank robberies. He was living with his family at a flat, which police have searched.