Psychiatric internment, motivations… What we know about the suspect arrested after the attack on a soldier in Paris

A soldier from Operation Sentinelle was attacked with a knife in front of the Gare de l’Est in Paris on Monday evening. The suspect, arrested on the scene, was known to the courts.

The days of the soldier attacked while he was patrolling the Eastern Guard in Paris on Monday July 15th will not be over.are not in danger“, assured Gérald Darmanin. The man was injured with a knife in the shoulder while he was on patrol as part of Operation Sentinelle. The suspect was taken into custody after his arrest at the scene of the attack.

Motivations at the heart of the investigations

Shortly before 10 p.m., the suspect, a 40-year-old man born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and of French nationality, stabbed “between the two shoulder blades” of the soldier who was patrolling. The suspect was quickly arrested by the other soldiers present and the injured soldier was quickly evacuated. His life is not in danger.

The man, who calls himself a Christian, shouted in French “God is big” in French, during the assault. “The circumstances and motivations of the attack are currently being investigated,” specified the Paris prosecutor’s office.

According to initial findings of the investigation, the man said he acted because “soldiers are killing people in his country.”

Declared criminally irresponsible

The forty-year-old, naturalized French in 2006, is known for a psychiatric history in France. In 2018, he fatally stabbed a 22-year-old man at the Châtelet-les-Halles RER station in central Paris. A case in which he was not tried, since he was declared criminally irresponsible, due to an abolition of discernment.

According to the court decision, dated 2020, the psychiatric assessment concluded that he suffered from a “probable progressive schizophrenic illness for several years without medical treatment until now”. The man has also been convicted twice for domestic violence.

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office has not been notified

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into attempted murder and has notified the second district of the Paris judicial police. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office has not been notified of the facts at this stage.

The Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, will go to the side of the soldier who was attacked, at the military hospital in Percy, in Hauts-de-Seine, on Tuesday. “Thoughts for the injured, support for our armed forces who are participating more than ever in the security of the French people”, reacted the Minister of the Armed Forces on Monday evening.