French interior minister admits "failings" in monitor of Paris police knife attacker
Record ID:
1435388
French interior minister admits "failings" in monitor of Paris police knife attacker
- Title: French interior minister admits "failings" in monitor of Paris police knife attacker
- Date: 6th October 2019
- Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (OCTOBER 3, 2019) (REUTERS) WOMAN CRYING AS SHE LEAVES POLICE HEADQUARTERS WHERE STABBING TOOK PLACE POLICE GUARDING PERIMETER AROUND POLICE HEADQUARTERS FRENCH FLAG FLYING EXTERIOR OF POLICE HEADQUARTERS POLICE ENTERING HEADQUARTERS
- Embargoed: 20th October 2019 14:16
- Keywords: prefecture France stabbing knife attack anti-terrorism unit investigation police interior minister Christophe Castaner
- Location: PARIS, FRANCE
- City: PARIS, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Crime
- Reuters ID: LVA001AZYL3RB
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Police inspection services had "failings" in monitoring the identity of the police employee who killed four of his colleagues in a stabbing at the Paris force headquarters last week, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Sunday (October 6).
At lunchtime on Thursday (October 3), the 45-year-old attacker, identified by authorities as IT employee Mickael H., went on a rampage that spanned two floors of the Paris police headquarters building, killing three police officers and an administrative worker, and wounding at least one other, before being shot dead.
Castaner has faced flak in the aftermath of the stabbing, after he had said the incident was not a terrorist act shortly after the attack, although the investigation was later taken over by France's anti-terrorism unit on Friday (October 4), suggesting the possibility of a terrorist motive.
The minister was also criticised by opposition parties who called for his resignation, for lax police measures that gave way for the attack to take place.
Castaner nonetheless said on Sunday that no element of radicalisation had been found in the attacker's administrative records.
"This man had not hidden the fact that he had converted and had become a Muslim. But it's not because one is Muslim that he is a terrorist," he said, adding that he dismisses the possibility of resigning.
In the past four years, the French capital has been rocked by major attacks resulting in mass casualties. Co-ordinated bombings and shootings by Islamist militants in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and other locations around Paris killed 130 people in the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two.
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