The investigation continues four days after the terrorist attack that left one dead and two injured on the evening of Saturday, December 2, on the Bir-Hakeim bridge in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. The anti-terrorism prosecutor's office announced on Wednesday the opening of a judicial investigation into the knife attack near the Eiffel Tower, after the police custody of the assailant was lifted, who will now be presented to an investigating judge.
The judge must decide whether to indict Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, in particular for murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise in a state of legal recidivism and for criminal terrorist association, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) said in a statement, which also requested his pre-trial detention.
The young man had been in police custody since his arrest on Saturday night, as allowed by law as part of a terrorism investigation.
'Very cold' and 'disembodied' behaviour in police custody
The 26-year-old, known to the intelligence services for his radical Islamism and psychiatric disorders, said he acted in "reaction to the persecution of Muslims around the world".
During his police custody, which was lifted around 16:00 p.m. according to the PNAT, he appeared "very cold", "clinical", "disembodied", says a source close to the investigation.
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, was arrested and taken into custody after the attack that stabbed a 23-year-old German-Filipino tourist and stabbed two others with a hammer near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night, less than eight months before the Olympics in the capital.
The attacker said he chose this location on purpose, according to the source close to the investigation: the monument is a "symbolic place" and "he couldn't stand the fact that it was lit in the colors of Israel," after the massacres committed by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7.
On Sunday, his parents and a relative were taken into custody at the premises of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI). The parents, "very attached to France" according to the source close to the investigation, were released on Monday.
A relative "belonging to the jihadist sphere"
The police custody of his relative continued until the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. It was finally lifted on Wednesday morning "without prosecution at this stage", the PNAT said, because "there was no evidence against him likely to characterise a criminal offence".
According to a source close to the case, the 27-year-old woman "belongs to the jihadist sphere" and had recently received a marriage proposal from the attacker. The latter had "seen her the day before" she committed the act, according to a source close to the investigation.
The government has been under pressure since this attack, which occurred after the attack in mid-October in Arras (Pas-de-Calais), which cost the life of a teacher and led to the raising of the Vigipirate plan to the maximum level of "attack emergency".
On both the far right and the right, there have been calls for an extension of "security detention" to those convicted of terrorist acts.
A questionable medical follow-up
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab had already been sentenced to five years in prison for terrorist conspiracy, after a plan to carry out violent action in La Défense, the business district west of Paris, in 2016. He was released from prison in March 2020.
Did he still have links within the Islamist sphere? Investigators are limited in their investigations by the fact that they have not found the man's phone, according to the source close to the investigation.
Since Saturday, his medical follow-up has raised questions and criticism. "There is no such thing as zero risk. Demanding this is not possible. What we must demand from leaders is that we are pro-active, "commented Wednesday morning on France 2 the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti.
"The difficulty here is the therapeutic injunction. How can you force someone to take their medication? That's what we're thinking about," he continued.
"There was clearly a psychiatric failure," Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Monday, adding that it was necessary to "think about all this to protect the French."
The family had previously complained to the police about their son
Anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said on Sunday that the assailant, who was on file for Islamist radicalization, was "subject to a care order involving a tight psychiatric follow-up controlled by a coordinating doctor" until the end of probation on April 26, 2023, after a new psychiatric assessment.
The suspect's mother told police in October that she was worried about her son, seeing that he was "withdrawing into himself," according to the anti-terrorism prosecutor.
The police then tried to have him examined by a doctor and to hospitalize him as a matter of course, a measure that was ultimately impossible in the absence of unrest, according to a source close to the case.
According to an intelligence source, about 20% of the 5,200 people known to be radicalized in France suffer from psychiatric disorders.
With AFP
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