(Paris) The Franco-Iranian suspected of being the author of the fatal knife attack on Saturday evening near the Eiffel Tower was indicted on Wednesday by an anti-terrorism judge, four days after this jihadist attack which put the French government under pressure.
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, aged 26 and known for his radical Islamism and his psychiatric disorders, was indicted for assassination and attempted assassination, “in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and for legal recidivism, and for criminal terrorist association, his lawyer told AFP.
This former detainee for “terrorist” offenses was arrested after the attack which caused the death of a 23-year-old German-Filipino tourist and injured two other people on Saturday evening not far from the Eiffel Tower, a few months before the Games. Summer Olympics scheduled for July 26 to August 11 in the French capital.
Before his act, he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group and claimed, in police custody, to have acted in “reaction to the persecution of Muslims around the world”.
Faced with investigators, the young man appeared “very cold”, “clinical”, “disembodied”, according to a source close to the investigation. According to this source, the attacker said he chose this location as he could not bear that the monument, a “symbolic place”, was lit “in the colors of Israel” after the massacres committed by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. on October 7.
By opening a judicial investigation on Wednesday, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) entrusted the investigation to an investigating judge who indicted the suspect, the equivalent in French law of an indictment.
A hearing opened around 8 p.m. before a judge of freedoms and detention (JLD) to decide whether he should be placed in pre-trial detention, as requested by the Pnat.
Facing the JLD, the attacker appeared concentrated, with a long black beard and scratches on his face, dressed in a gray fleece, noted an AFP journalist before the proceedings were closed to the public.
“No zero risk”
“Coming from a family without any religious commitment”, according to a source close to the investigation, the young man converted to Islam at 18, falling “very quickly” into “jihadist ideology”.
Sentenced to five years in prison for terrorist conspiracy, after a planned violent action in La Défense, the business district of Paris, in 2016, he was released from prison in March 2020.
The government is under pressure after this attack which occurred after that in mid-October in Arras, in the north of the country, which cost the life of a teacher and led to the Vigipirate plan being raised to the maximum “emergency attack” level.
The medical monitoring of the attacker in particular raised questions and criticism.
According to anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard, the suspect, on file for Islamist radicalization, was “subject to a treatment order involving tighter and controlled psychiatric monitoring” until the end of the probation on April 26, 2023.
“There was clearly a psychiatric failure, the doctors considered on several occasions that he was better,” said the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on Monday, sparking criticism in the medical world.
“This is not the failure of justice. The first person responsible and perhaps the only person responsible for this terrorist act is its author,” defended the Minister of Justice, Eric-Dupond-Moretti on Wednesday, judging that “zero risk does not exist”.
“How can you force someone to take their medication? This is what we are thinking about,” he added.
According to a source within the intelligence services, around 20% of the 5,200 people known for radicalization in France suffer from psychiatric disorders.
“Withdrawn on itself”
The custody of a woman already known to the intelligence services, and whom the attacker had seen the day before his attack, according to a source close to the investigation, was also lifted on the night of Tuesday through Wednesday, with no charges at this point Wednesday.
According to a source close to the case, this 27-year-old woman “belongs to the jihadist sphere” and had received a recent marriage proposal from the attacker.
The custody of the assailant’s parents was lifted on Monday.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the suspect’s mother had indicated to the police in October that she was worried about her son, seeing that he was “withdrawing on himself”.
The police then tried to have him examined by a doctor and hospitalized, something ultimately impossible in the absence of problems, according to a source close to the case.