Terrorist plot’ probe after deadly Paris stabbing

From France 24

Paris (AFP) – French prosecutors have opened an investigation into a “terrorist plot” after a man known to the authorities as a radical Islamist with mental health troubles stabbed a tourist to death and wounded two other people in central Paris at the weekend before being arrested.

Terrorism prosecutors told AFP on Sunday they were investigating the knife and hammer attacker, identified as Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a French national born in 1997 to Iranian parents.

Arrested at the scene, he is suspected of murder and attempted murder “in connection with a terrorist plot”.

A 23-year-old man, identified by a judicial source as a German-Filipino citizen, died in the attack, though a taxi driver intervened to keep the attacker away from his wife. . . A 66-year-old British citizen and a 60-year-old French national were wounded in the attack.

Three people “close to” Rajabpour-Miyandoab were being held in custody on Sunday afternoon, prosecutors said.

Rajabpour-Miyandoab, known to authorities for extremism, shouted “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is greatest” — as he struck on Saturday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said at the scene by Bir Hakeim bridge over the River Seine.

The suspect, who lived with his parents in the Essonne region south of Paris, told police he could not stand Muslims being killed in “Afghanistan and Palestine” and accused France of being “an accomplice to what Israel is doing” in the Gaza Strip,

Investigators would scrutinise his medical history, a security source told AFP, saying the attacker was “very unstable and easily influenced.

Darmanin said the man had previously been sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning another attack in the Paris business district of La Defense, which he failed to carry out.