French anti-terror investigators were on Friday seeking to identify a man shot dead while trying to storm a Paris police station brandishing a meat cleaver and wearing a fake suicide vest.
French anti-terror investigators were on Friday seeking to identify a man shot dead while trying to storm a Paris police station brandishing a meat cleaver and wearing a fake suicide vest.
The man was shot dead by officers as he ran towards the entrance of the police station waving the meat cleaver and shouting “Allahu Akbar” on Thursday, exactly a year to the day since the massacre of journalists at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
Based on his fingerprints, the police initially identified him as Sallah Ali, born in 1995 in Casablanca, a homeless man who was arrested for theft in 2013.
But Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday that the identity was “not at all certain” since he was carrying no documents at the time of his arrest.
“This identity (he gave in 2013) is contradicted by a hand-written note that we found in his clothes,” Mr Molins told France Inter radio. “He is not known to the intelligence services under this name.”
The note, which included a hand-drawn flag of ISIS, gave a different name which Mr Molins did not reveal. It also said his nationality was Tunisian instead of Moroccan.
Mr Molins said the man was carrying a mobile phone with a German SIM card, with French media saying it contained several messages in Arabic, some of which were sent from Germany.
The police station is in Paris’ 18th district, an area with a mainly North African population which lies close to the tourist hotspot of Montmartre. Describing the attack, an investigation source said the man pulled the cleaver from his inside coat pocket as he ran towards the officers. He “did not heed the warnings, and police opened fire”.
The attacker was also wearing a pouch under his coat with a wire hanging from it, but the device “contained no explosives,” the source told AFP. A remote-controlled robot was also used to inspect the body for explosives.
The attack “illustrates very well the multi-form character of the terrorist threat today in France,” said Mr Molins. “We can find ourselves confronted by very organised attacks with extensive logistics and coordination, and on the other hand by people who work in an isolated manner, either because of psychological instability or simply because they are following the standing order to carry out murders,” he said.
ISIS has called for supporters to carry out random attacks in France and other European countries.
