After trying to set fire to the Rouen synagogue this Friday, May 17, a man with a knife was shot dead by the police. Investigators are trying to understand the profile of the individual and establish his motive.
Shot dead by the police this Friday, May 17, the attacker of the Rouen synagogue was identified by investigators, but investigations are continuing to determine his profile. According to a source close to the case, the man is 29 years old and born in Algeria. He had been subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) for a year. This obligation was not fulfilled, however, because the individual had initiated an appeal before the administrative courts, reports AFP.
Surveillance cameras in the city and the synagogue, located in the center, allowed the police to identify the facts. In the images which show part of the roof of the building, we can see a man who “brandishes an iron bar in one hand, and a knife in the other”, said the public prosecutor of Rouen, Frédéric Teillet, during a press point this Friday noon. Arrested by the police, the individual “insulted the police” then “threw the iron bar towards the police, jumped from the roof and ran towards a police officer, threatening him with a knife”, still according to the magistrate.
Earlier in the morning, the mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, related a similar story about the unfolding of the facts at the microphone of France Blue Normandy. He added, however, that the man had been seen “throwing an incendiary element, what could be called a Molotov cocktail” towards the synagogue.
Hit by bullet four times
According to statements by the public prosecutor, the man suspected of having set fire to the Rouen synagogue was threatening the police. One of them, threatened with a knife, backed away several meters and “pointed his weapon at the attacker” while issuing several warnings according to the magistrate. The warnings did not deter the suspect, so the police officer fired “five times, hitting the man four times”. The man died at the scene from his injuries, despite the treatment provided by firefighters.
The police officer who fired the shots was taken into custody, as required by procedure. But according to the first images seen by the magistrate the official “used his weapon within permitted conditions”, and his police custody “will be lifted at the end of his hearing”.
The terrorist trail “under evaluation”
The attack on character probably anti-Semitic is at the origin of the opening of two investigations for “arson” targeting a place of worship and for “intentional violence against persons holding public authority entrusted to the general direction of the national police.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has not yet taken up the investigations. Nevertheless, he told Franceinfo that he was “assessing” the situation. To qualify acts of terrorism, the PNAT analyzes several criteria, including the profile of the author, his motivations, his ideological impregnation, his possible psychological fragilities and, finally, the existence or not of a claim aimed at associating his passage to the act to an ideological or a terrorist group, explains The world. Information still unknown to the police services at the moment.