Updated 01.26 | Published 01.23
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A German tourist was killed in a stabbing attack in central Paris on Saturday night.
The suspected perpetrator has been arrested and the police will investigate whether there is an Islamist terrorist motive behind it.
– A German tourist, born in the Philippines, died in the stabbing, says French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who arrived at the scene of the crime near the Eiffel Tower.
According to the newspaper L e Parisien, the suspect is a French citizen, aged 25 and born in France. He attacked people seemingly at random near the Eiffel Tower. In addition to the killed tourist, one person was shocked and another tourist received minor injuries when he tried to stop the perpetrator.
The suspect was known by authorities to follow radical Islam and was sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning an attack that police managed to thwart, according to the interior minister. A police source also says that the man has a mental illness and that when he was arrested, the man is said to have said that he cannot bear to see Muslims killed.
The police neutralized the man with a stun gun.