Man who shot officers had been questioned this month
PARIS — French authorities on Friday identified an often-convicted criminal, apparently inspired by the Islamic State, as the perpetrator of a deadly attack on police officers in a shooting that set France on edge and darkened the final day of campaigning in the country’s pivotal presidential election.
Despite a promise not to campaign following the attack Thursday night on Paris’s renowned ChampsElysees boulevard, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen reinforced her anti-immigrant message in a Friday speech, calling on the French government to immediately reinstate border checks and expel foreigners being monitored by the intelligence services.
“My government of national unity will implement this policy, so that the republic will live, and that France will live,” she said at an impromptu news conference.
Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rejected early calls to postpone Sunday’s first round of voting, saying that “nothing should hinder this fundamental democratic moment for our country.” He pledged heightened security, including deployments of heavily armed soldiers, as French voters go to the polls.
In Washington, President Donald Trump waded into France’s political morass with predictions that the Champs-Elysees attack would “have a big effect” on the election and would “probably help” Le Pen, who has raised many of the same anti-immigrant and security issues that Trump promoted during his campaign.
One police officer was killed and two others were seriously injured when a gunman, formally identified Friday as Karim Cheurfi, opened fire with a Kalashnikov rifle on a police patrol parked on Paris’s best-known thoroughfare, sending pedestrians fleeing into side streets. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Cheurfi was then shot dead as he tried to escape, Paris prosecutor François Molins said. Investigators subsequently found a number of knives and a pump-action shotgun in Cheurfi’s car, as well as a message apparently scribbled in support of the Islamic State.
Molins said pieces of paper with addresses of police stations also were found in his car.
Cheurfi, a 39-year-old of Algerian descent who was born in the Paris suburbs, had a criminal record and was well-known to authorities, Molins said. In a profile that mirrored those of perpetrators of other recent, smaller-scale attacks, Cheurfi had been convicted at least four times since 2003 and had spent nearly 14 years in prison for crimes ranging from burglary and theft to attempted murder.
In 2001, he fired on and wounded two men, one of them a plainclothes police officer, who were chasing him as he drove a stolen car. He was released from prison in October 2015 and lived with his mother in an eastern suburb of Paris.
Earlier this year, Molins said, French authorities became aware that Cheurfi had sought to purchase weapons and had made statements about wanting to kill police officers. As recently as April 7, Molins said, authorities had interviewed Cheurfi following a trip to Algeria. However, a judge decided not to revoke his probation.
Cheurfi’s former lawyer, Jean-Laurent Panier, told BFM TV on Friday that his client was “extremely isolated” and a “psychologically fragile character” whose problems went untreated. He said Cheurfi never spoke about religion, adding that he talked mainly about “how to fill his daily life with video games.”
The slain police officer, identified as Xavier Jugele, 37, was a member of the LGBT police association and had spent his entire career in Paris, police officials said.