• The victim, Stéphanie M., a police officer, was 49 years old and the mother of two children.

  • The assailant, Jamel G., a 36-year-old Tunisian, was shot dead by a police officer fire.

    Witnesses would have heard him shout "Allahu Akabar", according to a source close to the investigation.

  • The national counterterrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, declared that the latter had carried out a location scouting, without specifying its content.

    The Pnat took up the investigation.

A few months after the assassination of Samuel Paty, beheaded in front of the high school in which he taught, the Yvelines department is again the ground of a terrorist attack: this Friday at the beginning of the afternoon, Stéphanie M., an official 49-year-old police officer, was stabbed to death in the airlock of the Rambouillet police station where she had worked for 28 years.

His attacker, a 36-year-old Tunisian who arrived in France in 2009, died a few minutes later, shot dead by police who witnessed the tragedy.

In the evening, three relatives of the assailant were taken into custody after a search of his home.

20 Minutes

takes stock.

What happened ?

If the investigation is only in its infancy, the scenario of this macabre afternoon seems little by little to take shape. Around 2:20 p.m., the victim, a 49-year-old administrative agent, rushed into the building's secure airlock after having gone to put back his parking disc. The assailant, who would have spotted him from the parking lot, enters in turn. In a short speech, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, said that the latter had carried out a location identification, without specifying its content.

As soon as the exterior door is closed, and before the one leading to the police station hall opens, the man brandishes a knife and stabs his victim in the neck.

Several witnesses say they heard him shout "Allahu Akbar" while committing his crime, said a source close to the investigation.

One of the officials who assists behind the glass door to the drama, immediately opens fire on the assailant.

Hit twice, according to a police source, he died shortly after.

His victim, mother of two, did not survive either, despite the intervention of the firefighters.

Three people in custody

Three people were taken into custody in the evening, we learned from a judicial source.

These three people belong to the assailant's entourage.

Two searches were underway on Friday afternoon at his home in Rambouillet, as well as that of a person who welcomed him on his arrival in France in 2009, according to a source close to the investigation, confirming information from the

Point

.

Who is the attacker?

The discovery of his identity papers in his personal effects quickly identified the assailant: Jamel G, a 36-year-old Tunisian, with a clean criminal record and unknown to the intelligence services.

Originally from the Sousse region, in eastern Tunisia, he arrived in France in 2009 and in 2019 had benefited from an exceptional employee residence permit, then a residence permit in December 2020, valid until in December 2021, according to the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office.

What are his motives ?

At this stage of the investigations, impossible to know that they were precisely his motivations.

If at the beginning of the afternoon an uncertainty hung over the terrorist nature of this attack, the national anti-terrorism prosecution finally took up the case after having carried out an assessment of the first elements.

A decision justified by the "modalities of the attack" - a stabbing murder against a police officer, a scenario characteristic of terrorist attacks - but also by the "words made by the author" and the "elements of tracking, ”said Jean-François Ricard.

Our file on the Rambouillet attack

An investigation has been opened of the heads of assassination on a person holding public authority in connection with a terrorist enterprise and terrorist association of criminals.

The investigations were entrusted to the central directorate of the judicial police and to the DGSI under the coordination of the anti-terrorism sub-directorate.

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