- Title: FRANCE: French police set to question Paris shooting suspect, prosecutor says
- Date: 21st November 2013
- Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (NOVEMBER 21, 2013) (REUTERS) VARIOUS EXTERIORS OF PARIS COURTHOUSE/ PALACE OF JUSTICE WITH FRENCH FLAGS PARIS PROSECUTOR FRANCOIS MOLINS ARRIVING FOR NEWS CONFERENCE JOURNALIST WITH NEWSPAPER ON LAP (SOUNDBITE) (French) PARIS PROSECUTOR FRANCOIS MOLINS SAYING: "As they were both heading to the underground car park where he was discovered, Abdelhakim Dekhar
- Embargoed: 6th December 2013 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: France
- Country: France
- Topics: Crime
- Reuters ID: LVAF08IP5PS13NTHSHWTWH0LFHTQ
- Story Text: French police set to question a man they suspect shot a newspaper employee and fired at a bank this week, and identified as Abdelhakim Dekhar.
French police were to start questioning a man they suspect shot a newspaper employee and fired at a bank this week, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Thursday (November 21).
Abdelhakim Dekhar, 48, was arrested late on Wednesday in a semi-conscious state in a parked car in a Paris suburb, where police also found sedatives.
Police were unable to question Dekhar immediately because he was believed to have taken heavy medication. He was taken to hospital.
According to Molins, Dekhar was temporarily living at a friend's house over the period of the attacks at French news channel BFM TV and daily newspaper Liberation.
"As they were both heading to the underground car park where he was discovered, Abdelhakim Dekhar told him (his landlord) his plans to end his life and talked briefly about the events at (French daily newspaper) Liberation," Molins told a news conference.
Dekhar had been jailed in 1994 for buying a gun used by a couple of suspected anarchist militants in a shootout with police in Paris.
He claimed at the time to be an agent of the Algerian security forces and denied any involvement in the incident, which became known as the "Rey-Maupin affair" after the couple.
Molins told reporters police had found a letter in which Dekhar criticised journalists for lying to their audiences, and also capitalism. Molins said experts back in 1994 had found that Dekhar showed "mythomaniac tendencies."
"Expert psychiatrists who had examined him during the 'Florence Rey" case had noticed at the time, I quote, 'a rich and flourished discourse revealing mythomaniac tendencies.' The investigation as you know is only starting, investigators are about to start questioning Abdelhakim Dekhar, doctors have said he can now be questioned," Molins said.
Police were able to identify Dekhar using DNA traces left behind on spent cartridges and in the car he used to get to the central Paris boulevard. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None