The French attacker of Iranian origin who this Saturday stabbed a German tourist to death and injured two other people in Paris had links to the terrorist who hacked Samuel Paty to death in 2020.
Local media have published this information in the last few hours. Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab would have been in contact with other jihadists in recent years, including the Chechen Abdoullakh Anzorov (18 years old) who beheaded Professor Samuel Paty and, after the crime, was killed by the Police.
Specialists from the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism have indicated to the newspaper ‘Le Figaro’ that Armand Rajabpur-Miyandoab also maintained ties with Adel Kermichewho murdered Father Jacques Hamel during the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray church attack in 2016.
The young man’s parents and sister, under police custody
The parents and sister of Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab were taken into police custody this Sunday, Le Parisien reported. The parents, who lived with the alleged perpetrator of the attack in the department of Essonne (greater Paris), are Iranian political exiles.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab, 26, He has French nationality because he was born in the country and their parents for having achieved naturalization. In cases of suspected jihadism, it is common for the French authorities to resort to police custody against members of the suspect’s family or immediate environment with the intention of obtain information or find out if they themselves are also involved.
Police custody in France in terrorism cases can last up to 144 hours (6 days). The alleged jihadist, who also He injured two people with hammer blows in the deadly attack on Saturdayis detained at the headquarters of the secret services in Paris.
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation last night for “murder and attempted murder with terrorist objectives”. Local media have leaked that the suspect left a vindication video in which he said he belonged to the Islamic State.
During Saturday’s attack, Rajabpour-Miyandoab shouted, authorities say, in Arabic Allahu-Akbar (“God is great”) and he ranted about the unjust deaths of Muslims in Gaza and Afghanistan. Apparently, the young man also suffers from psychiatric problems, although he was not currently taking medication, after six years of treatment (2016-2022).
The attacker was already booked for another frustrated attack
Rajabpour-Miyandoab, arrested after the events after being subdued by officers with a stun gun, He has already served four years in prison, between 2016 and 2020, for having planned an attack in the west of Paris in one of the main business neighborhoods in Europe, La Défense. Since his release from prison, this young man described as very impressionable was booked for Islamist radicalism.
Since 2012, jihadist attacks in France have caused the death of 273 people, adding that of Saturday, and injured 1,200especially in 2015 and 2016, when these were larger-scale attacks organized in groups, not by profiles that resemble “lone wolves.”