The attack took place on Saturday night shortly after 9 pm, between the Quai de Grenelle and Bir Hakeïm, in the 15th and 16th arrondissements, a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower and other particularly lively places on weekends, popular with tourists. The assailant attacked three people on the Quai de Grenelle. He struck a young man with “two hammer blows and four knife blows,” said Jean-François Ricard, the anti-terrorism prosecutor. The two people accompanying the victim were not injured, he said at a press conference.
As a taxi driver approached him, he shouted “Allah akbar” and then crossed the Bir-Hakeim bridge toward the 16th arrondissement. Law enforcement officers crossed his path and the assailant again shouted “Allah akbar” while claiming he was “wearing an explosive belt”, detailed Jean-François Ricard. This turned out to be false. Armand R. then went up “Avenue Kennedy, towards the Maison de la Radio” before injuring two other people with a hammer. The suspect “then took refuge in a courtyard” and was “finally subdued using an electrically charged pistol”. He was immediately placed in police custody.
The man killed in the attack was of German and Filipino nationality and was 23 years old, said the anti-terrorism prosecutor. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser denounced a “heinous crime” on Sunday. “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the deceased person and with the other victims of this horrible act,” said Faeser in an interview with the Funke media group. The two people who accompanied the victim were shocked and remained under medical surveillance on Sunday evening.
The suspect, a 26-year-old man born in 1997 to Iranian parents, was known to the authorities for his radical Islamism. Armand R. had been arrested in 2016 for a plan to carry out a knife attack in the La Défense business district, according to information from France Inter on Sunday. He had been sentenced in 2018 in this case to a five-year prison sentence, four of which were in prison. He remained in prison from 2016 to 2020.
Since his release from prison in March 2020, the suspect had been monitored by the DGSI for his computer activities, which were not suspicious in recent months. The assailant was also being treated for severe psychiatric disorders. He stopped his medication in March 2022 with the approval of his doctor, Franceinfo learned. In 2023, according to the same source, no psychiatric danger was identified in a recent report concerning the assailant.
Until his arrest in 2016, he was in contact with several radical Islamists on social media, including Abel Kermiche, who was shot by the BRI after the attack that killed a priest in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in 2016. Armand R. had also been taken into police custody 48 hours after the attack on Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020, Franceinfo learned on Sunday from a source close to the case. The suspect was released without charge. He had presented himself to the police, having been in contact on social media with the terrorist Abdoullakh Anzorov who murdered Samuel Paty.
