PARIS -- French police on Wednesday arrested a 22-year-old yout hard boy man in connection with the stabbing on Saturday of a French soldier in a Paris suburb, with officials describing the suspect as a fairly recent convert to Islam.
| How recent? Which mosque? Who's the imam? How is the mosque financed? From where does the money come? |
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said in a statement that the suspect was arrested Wednesday morning in the Yvelines region just west of Paris, following the stabbing of Pvt. Cédric Cordiez in the neck from behind with a short-bladed knife. The attack took place in the shopping mall and underground transportation hub of La Défense, west of Paris.
The French suspect was known to investigators, Mr. Valls said, but he urged caution and said: “I cannot talk about radical Islam.” He said investigators wanted to know more about the suspect’s “motivation, background and family environment.”
| Oh yes, let's do find out about the suspect's motivation, background and family environment. And then bury it so that the public never knows... |
The police said he was identified thanks to video footage from the crime and traces of his DNA found on items left at the scene in a plastic bag, including a knife and a bottle.
| Sloppy, sloppy -- he didn't wear gloves and he left his Perrier behind... |
On the French television channel i>TELE, Mr. Valls warned of a growing number of young radicals in France similar to Mohammed Merah, the Islamist gunman who killed seven people in and around the southwestern city of Toulouse last year.
Mr. Valls said there are “several dozen, perhaps several hundred, potential Merahs in our country,” saying young French Muslims were being “radicalized” on the Internet and by extremist imams.
| Perhaps the extremist imams could be invited to go home to Mauritania... |
He told Le Figaro newspaper that “no fewer than 120 French jihadists'’ were involved in fighting in Syria and about 60 percent of them were allied with Al Qaeda fighters. He said that about 30 had returned to France and were under surveillance by the French authorities.
| Why were they allowed to return? |
The attacker, described by the police at the time as bearded and tall, approached Private Cordiez from behind while he was on patrol with two colleagues, stabbed him in the neck and then disappeared into a crowd. Sources close to the investigation have said to French news agencies that the suspect was seen on video praying a few minutes before the attack and that he was “a young, recently converted Islamist'’ already known to the police for his strong religious convictions and who had committed petty crimes in the past. But the same sources said that there was no indication of any tendency toward violence in his behavior.
Private Cordiez, 23, was released from a military hospital on Monday and rejoined his unit. |