The man of 26 years old, who carried out the knife attack in Paris on Saturday, killing one person and injuring two others, was known to the authorities for his radical Islam and psychiatric problems.
Arrested on Saturday, December 2 after killing a German-Filipino tourist in Paris with a knife and attacking two others with a hammer, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a young Franco-Iranian, was known to authorities for his radical Islamist beliefs and psychiatric issues.
Born in France to Iranian refugee parents, the 26-year-old man had already been arrested by the DGSI in 2016 for a planned attack in La Défense, a business district in Paris.
As a biology student, he had planned to join the Islamic State terrorist group in the Iraqi-Syrian area and had contacts with “three repeat offenders” according to the Paris court that judged him in 2018.
In this case, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab was sentenced to five years in prison, one of which was suspended, and was released in 2020 after four years of detention. He had undergone psychiatric treatment throughout his detention and after his release, under judicial control and the Micas program, an administrative measure to prevent terrorism.
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab had become interested in Islam in 2014, converted in 2015, and had an accelerating radicalization process. He had claimed to have “de-radicalized” himself during his arrest in 2016. However, the court found this de-radicalization to be “fragile” due to his online research and conflicting statements.
After the murder of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020, he claimed to have become “anti-radical Islamists” after his detention, but his mother stated that he had “come out of detention with a hatred for Islam”.
He was described by a security source as “very impressionable” and “very unstable”, and had “significant online activity”.
Overall, radicalization and mental health issues combined to create a dangerous and unstable individual who posed a threat to society.
