Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, the author of the knife attack that killed one person and injured two others on Saturday, December 2 near the Eiffel Tower, says he acted in “reaction to the persecution of Muslims in the world.” In police custody, the profile of the 27-year-old woman is being questioned.
The terrorist responsible for the knife attack that killed one person and injured two others on Saturday near the Eiffel Tower “fully assumes and claims his act” in police custody on Monday, December 4, according to a source close to the investigation. To the police, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a 26-year-old Franco-Iranian, says he acted in “reaction to the persecution of Muslims in the world.” He appears “very cold,” “clinical,” and “disembodied,” the source added, estimating that “everything suggests he acted alone.”
Two people, the assailant and a person from his circle, were still in police custody on Monday evening, according to the anti-terror prosecutor’s office, while the measure was lifted for his two parents. The attacker’s detention could last until Wednesday evening, given that it is an anti-terrorist investigation. In addition to members of his family, a woman already known to the intelligence services was arrested in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis). The assailant “saw her the day before” he carried out the attack, according to a source close to the investigation. Investigators will now seek to determine the possible role she may have played in the attack.
According to Europe 1 and Radio France, this 27-year-old woman even exchanged text messages with the assailant just before he acted. The profile of this young woman is challenging: she has been the subject of an S file for Islamist radicalization since 2015, according to Europe 1. She has also been in contact with several figures of the Islamist movement already convicted of terrorism in France. In particular, Sarah Hervouët, involved in the failed gas canister attack at Notre-Dame in 2016 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for stabbing a police officer during her arrest.
But also Charaf-Din Aberouz, with whom she had an intimate relationship, who was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal association with a view to preparing a terrorist act for attempting to join an Al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan in 2011. He is also the brother of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, who was sentenced last month to life imprisonment for his role in the Magnanville attack.
The Eiffel Tower in the colors of Israel, “he could not bear it.”
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, listed for Islamist radicalization (FSPRT), interacted regularly “with people known to the intelligence services for radical Islam,” confirms a source close to the investigation. But these people were not “considered as carrying threats.” Surveillance by the intelligence services has been “increased” since early October, when he left his parents’ home to settle in Essonne, the source added. In these surveillance and online exchanges, “nothing suggested he was going to engage in an imminent project” and “no offense” that could have triggered legal action against him was detected, according to the source.
At the end of October, the assailant’s mother went to a police station to alert them to the “deterioration of her son’s mental state” since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. In custody, the assailant said he chose to carry out his attack near the Eiffel Tower because it is a “symbolic place” and “he could not bear that it was lit up in the colors of Israel.”
After the mother’s report, involuntary hospitalization was not possible in the absence of disturbances. His mother also did not want to request forced hospitalization for him. She had contact with a doctor, but not with her son. The doctor was “reassuring about his condition,” according to this source. The assailant said he bought a hammer, also used in the attack, in the weeks leading up to the attack. The act was “potentially prepared for several weeks,” another source close to the case said on Sunday.
Updated: at 8:45 PM with the end of the custody of the two parents.
