Paris Stabbing Suspect Was Released From Prison After Previous Islamic Terror Plot: French Minister

The suspect arrested in the vicious stabbing in Paris that left a German national dead and two others injured steps from the Eiffel Tower was released from prison in 2020 after plotting an Islamic terror attack, according to France’s interior minister.

Speaking to reporters late Saturday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the arrested suspect, a French citizen in his mid-20s, was distraught over how “many Muslims are dying in Afghanistan and in Palestine,” claiming that France was an accomplice, according to reports by The Associated Press and Politico.

Darmanin said the accused attacker apparently cried “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), according to the AP.

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The suspect previously served four years in jail for plotting another attack in 2016.

Born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, the accused attacker was released from prison in 2020, was under surveillance and undergoing psychiatric treatment, and was most recently living with his parents in the Essonne region, south of Paris, Darmanin said. “This person was ready to kill others,” Darmanin told reporters.

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Authorities said the accused attacker, who has not been identified by name, went after a German couple with a knife shortly after 9 p.m. on the Quai de Grenelle, not far from the Eiffel Tower. A 23-year-old man who was a German-Filipino citizen died from his injuries. A taxi driver reportedly tried to intervene in the attack near the Bir Hakeim bridge, an area popular with tourists, but the suspect ran across to the other side of the River Seine to the Right Bank, attacking two others with a hammer.

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France has been under a heightened terror alert since the October fatal stabbing of a teacher, Dominique Bernard, in the northern city of Arras by a former student originally from the Ingushetia region in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains and suspected of Islamic radicalization.

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