In the aftermath of the attack at the Rambouillet police station, investigators will now try to find out more about the profile of the assailant, while three members of his entourage have been placed in police custody.
Arrived in France in 2009, this 36-year-old Tunisian was unknown to the police and intelligence services.
DECRYPTION
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the investigations will accelerate.
Three people were taken into police custody late Friday as part of the investigation into the attack carried out the same day in the entrance to a police station in Rambouillet, near Paris, where a 36-year-old Tunisian stabbed a police officer in the throat before being shot dead.
These first custody should help investigators draw the profile of the assailant, completely unknown to the police and intelligence.
Europe 1 takes stock of what we know at this stage about the profile of the perpetrator of the attack.
In France since 2009
The man is a 36-year-old Tunisian.
Originally from the Sousse region in eastern Tunisia, he had been in France since 2009, and had obtained a residence permit thanks to his job as a delivery driver.
He is completely unknown to the police and intelligence services.
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According to a source close to the investigation, he had been living for a few years in an off-center house in Rambouillet, after having resided in Val-de-Marne.
One of his former neighbors, interviewed by AFP, who knew him at this address for two months in 2017, remembers a "Muslim" man but "not practicing", living alone and working in the building.
Spotting at the scene of the attack
Investigators, however, already know that his attack was premeditated, since he had scouted the scene.
At the time of the incident, he allegedly shouted "Allah Akbar".
On social networks, for several years, his public posts were devoted in number to the denunciation of Islamophobia or the comments of polemicists like Eric Zemmour.
But from April 2020, at the time of confinement, he was only publishing pious prayers and Koranic verses.
On October 24, 2020, eight days after the assassination of college professor Samuel Paty, he changed his profile picture and joined a campaign called "Respect Mohammed, prophet of God".
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So many elements which led the national antiterrorist prosecution (Pnat) to open an investigation for "assassination of a person holding public authority in connection with a terrorist enterprise and terrorist criminal association". Investigators will now work on the assailant's environment, his relationships, his family, but also to find out if he acted alone, and if anyone was aware of his deadly plan.