Attack in Paris: what we know about the attacker's motive

Police officers at the scene of the attack which left two injured rue Nicolas Appert in the 11 arrondissement of Paris on September 25, 2020. AP Photo / Thibault Camus

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4 min

After the stabbing attack that left two injured in front of the former premises of "Charlie Hebdo", the main suspect says he believed he had attacked journalists from the satirical newspaper.

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Arrested less than an hour after the attack, the 18-year-old Pakistani who says his name is Hassan A. told investigators that he was indeed the perpetrator and that he believed he had attacked

Charlie Hebdo

journalists

.

This admission confirms

that it is indeed a terrorist attack

targeting employees of the satirical newspaper.

The young man assumes his act that he says he prepared by carrying out several scouting in the rue Nicolas-Appert, in the 11th arrondissement.

It is in fact in this street that the premises of

Charlie Hebdo were located

at the time of the attacks of January 2015. Since then, the newspaper has changed address in a highly secure and kept secret. 

Anger as a motive after the republication of the cartoons

It would be the anger that would have pushed this Pakistani refugee to take action.

He indeed told investigators that he did not support the second publication of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The perpetrator of last Friday's attack assumes a religious dimension to his act, but he claims no allegiance to al-Qaeda, which made

new threats against

Charlie Hebdo

 because of these cartoons.

According to a source close to the file cited by Agence France-Presse, a video of several minutes " 

not yet fully authenticated

 " shows a man who could be, " 

extremely likely

 " Hassan A. On the video, this man " 

sings, cries, speaks of the caricatures of the prophet and announces his passage to the act in a kind of manifesto 

”, details this source, which insists on“

 the absence of an act of allegiance to an organization

 ”.

A second suspect ... with " 

heroic behavior

 "

The second suspect taken into police custody after the attack has been exonerated.

For his lawyer " 

he must be presented as a hero, he behaved heroically,

 " said Me Lucie Simon about his client, "Youssef" (assumed name), released Friday evening after spending ten hours in police custody with anti-terrorism investigators.

Youssef was at Boulevard Richard Lenoir, he hears the cry of a woman then a man and sees someone leaving with a knife and who drops this knife at the entrance to the metro entrance

 ", says she.

The man, 33 years old, of Algerian nationality and present for less than ten years in France, then presented himself to the police to testify.

He was taken into police custody " 

with an arrest like terrorism cases: handcuffs, blindfolded

 ", adds his lawyer.

I thought they were going to treat me like a hero and I was put behind bars,

 " he said in particular.

Eight other people were still in custody early Saturday evening as part of the investigation opened by the national anti-terrorism prosecution: the younger brother of the young Pakistani, an acquaintance, five men who were in one of his homes suspected in the suburbs of Paris and a former roommate.

(With agencies)

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