In the aftermath of the knife attack at the police headquarters in Paris, the prefect Didier Lallement brought several lights on Friday, October 4, on the circumstances of the deadly attack in which four people were killed.
"Our police lucidity leads us to strictly exclude any hypothesis at this stage," said the police chief, while the investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor has so far not retained a terrorist qualification. "We were touched in the heart, but we are still standing," said Didier Lallement.
The assailant authorized to the secret-defense
The prefect also explained that the attacker, "an administrative agent among us since 2003", was entitled to the secret-defense. "He was in good standing with the obligations inherent in this type of authorization," he said, adding that "the rest is a judicial inquiry."
Didier Lallement went on to explain that "this tragedy is all the more terrible because it has reached the interior of the Prefecture and it has been worn by one of us".
The prefect of police in Paris also returned to the security conditions inside the nerve center of the Paris police. "(They) are absolute" and "are not in question," he said. And to clarify: "Those outside the administration go through a security portal", adding that his services were primarily focused on an attack from "outside".
A medical-psychological unit was set up for the employees of the prefecture and 179 people have already been there, said the prefect.
The unprecedented attack on the premises of the police headquarters occurred the day after a "march of anger" that had gathered thousands of police in Paris, came to say their "fed up" and ask for better working conditions.
With Reuters and AFP