A drama which once again caused astonishment and emotion. Almost three years to the day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, it was a new teacher, Dominique Bernard, who was the victim of an Islamist attack this Friday, October 13 in a high school in Arras, stabbed to death while trying to oppose an attacker who had entered the premises of the establishment.
The author of this attack, Mohammed Mogouchkov, who injured three other people, was arrested immediately and an investigation was opened on Friday evening by the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. Aged 20 and born in Malgobek, in the predominantly Muslim Russian Republic of Ingushetia, according to the administration, he arrived in France in 2008. He had no criminal record but had been followed “since the end of the month of July”, according to Gérald Darmanin, by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), thanks to wiretapping and physical surveillance measures. This surveillance was put in place because “there were links” between him and his detained brother, the Minister of the Interior explained on Saturday.
Nine people still in police custody
Eleven people were taken into custody on Saturday as part of the investigation. Nine were still there this Sunday, at the anti-terrorist sub-directorate of the judicial police (Sdat) and at the DGSI. Among them: Mohammed Mogouchkov himself, but also two of his brothers, including the one incarcerated, his younger sister, his mother and one of his uncles. However, two police custody was lifted, those of two Belarusians “who had nothing to do with the investigation”, AFP learned from police sources.
Since his arrest on Friday, Mohammed Mogouchkov “has not spoken”, said one of these sources, even though police custody can last up to 96 hours. The author’s “motivations” “remain to be defined”, Gérald Darmanin said on Saturday, while he affirmed on Friday on TF1 that there was “without doubt” a link with the events in the Middle East.
The entourage at the heart of the investigation
The investigation is already starting to reveal first information. Thus, “the father and brother had a determining influence, it seems, in the act,” a police source explained to AFP. The father of the attacker, on S file and deported in 2018, “was a supporter of radical Islam”, underlined Gérald Darmanin. He is “very probably in Georgia”, a police source said on Sunday. His older brother was sentenced to five years of imprisonment, in 2023, for not having denounced a planned attack near the Presidency of the Republic, of which he was aware. He was later convicted of advocating terrorism.
The case of another detainee, also in police custody, raises questions among investigators. According to The Parisian, this radicalized prisoner communicated with the attacker on secure networks. According to a source close to the case at AFP, he presented a “really worrying profile”. During his detentions in different prisons, he was “noted to have an influence on fellow prisoners”.
“No flaws” in information
Gérald Darmanin nevertheless affirms it: there was “no failure by the intelligence services”. A position supported by Élisabeth Borne, according to which “nothing in the elements that we had been able to obtain made it possible to predict that this individual […] could take action”, she indicated in La Tribune Sunday.
Mohammed Mogouchkov was checked on Thursday, the day before the incident, without “any offense being held against him”. This check was intended to check “if he did not have weapons on him, but also to carry out more intrusive intelligence techniques and in particular access his phone and the encrypted messaging on his phone”, according to the Minister of Defense. ‘Interior. “He probably missed a few hours” to allow investigators to exploit these techniques, he said, adding that it was however “not certain” that the author was talking on his phone before his visit to the act.
His profile “is therefore similar to a radicalized individual whose potential is known but who suddenly decides to take action, making his neutralization difficult”, explained an intelligence source to AFP. “The only thing we knew about this person was when he attacked his mother. He was in police custody for domestic violence,” underlined Gérald Darmanin. The attacker could not legally be deported, having entered France before the age of 13.
“What more could we do in this case? Should what is unpredictable be foreseen?” the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, said on Sunday on France Inter.