Weapons stash found at Champs-Elysees attacker’s home: Source

Police secure the area near a burned car at the scene of an incident in which it rammed a gendarmerie van on the Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris, France on June 19, 2017. PHOTO: REUTERS

PARIS (AFP) - Investigators have found a stash of weapons at the home of a man killed while ramming a car loaded with guns and a gas canister into a police van on Paris's Champs-Elysees, a source close to the probe said Tuesday (June 20).

Adam Djaziri, a 31-year-old who had been on a watchlist for radical Muslims since 2015, had at least nine weapons, including two pistols and a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle, the source said.

The revelation of the discovery came after Prime Minister Edouard Philippe expressed dismay that Djaziri was able to have a gun permit despite being on an extremist watchlist.

"What I know at this stage is that the first weapons permit was given before this individual was flagged up," he said in an interview with BFM television and RMC radio on Tuesday.

He added that "nobody can be satisfied - and certainly not me" that Djaziri had still been able to possess dangerous weapons.

Meanwhile French police have taken into custody four members of Djaziri's family, a judicial source said earlier on Tuesday.

Djaziri's ex-wife, brother and sister-in-law were detained late on Monday afternoon after police questioned them at the family home outside Paris.

The assailant's father was also "taken into custody during the evening", the source said.

The suspect's father told AFP that his son "had a registered weapon, he practised shooting".

There has been no claim of responsibility for the assault, which occurred just a short distance from where an extremist shot dead a police officer two months earlier.

France remains under a state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists slaughtered 130 people in a night of carnage at venues across the city.

The latest attack came two days before the French government is to unveil a new anti-terrorism law, designed to allow the state of emergency to be lifted.

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