Officials: Fatal attack near Paris terror-related
PARIS — French prosecutors said a knife attack Friday that left one man dead and two women injured in a park in the Paris area is being treated as terror-related.
In a statement Saturday, they said investigations over the past few hours revealed that the assailant, who was shot dead by police, had been radicalized and had prepared the attack in Villejuif, in the southern suburbs of Paris.
They said their investigations justify a probe into “murder and attempted murder in relation to a terrorist undertaking.”
Earlier Saturday, Creteil prosecutor Laure Beccuau described the assailant as a 22-year-old man with a psychiatric history.
She said he had converted to Islam between May and July 2019 and that he shouted “Allahu akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic — several times during the attack.
She added that investigators are also looking into the assailant’s phone calls and computer equipment.
Philippe Bugeaud, deputy director of the judicial police, said a letter — details of which were not revealed — and several books about Islam were found in the assailant’s bag, including some about Salafism, widely considered to be a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam.
The attacker’s family was cooperating with police, Beccuau added.
Bugeaud said that there was no evidence that he had any accomplices.
More than 230 people were killed in terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and 2016, most of them claimed by the Islamic State extremist group. Another 17 people have been killed in six other attacks by lone assailants since April 2017, also mostly claimed by Islamic State.
The two women injured in Friday’s attack have left the hospital.