Three held after police worker stabbed to death near Paris

RAMBOUILLET (France) • French investigators were yesterday questioning three people linked to a Tunisian man who stabbed a police employee to death near Paris in a suspected Islamist attack.

The murder at a police station in Rambouillet, a commuter town about 60km from Paris, revived the trauma of a spate of deadly attacks last year.

The victim, a 49-year-old woman named as Stephanie M., was a police administrative assistant and mother of two. She was stabbed twice in the throat at the entrance of the station.

Her 36-year-old attacker, named as Jamel G., who had not been known to police or intelligence services, was shot and fatally wounded by an officer at the scene.

President Emmanuel Macron, who was on a visit to Chad, tweeted that France would never give in to "Islamist terrorism".

The latest violence targeting police is likely to focus attention further on the danger of Islamist extremism in France and wider concerns about security a year ahead of a presidential election.

Prime Minister Jean Castex said he would hold a meeting in Paris with ministers and security officials after the killing. National anti-terrorism prosecutors have opened a terror investigation.

Chief anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard confirmed "comments made by the assailant" indicated a terror motive.

Jamel G.'s father and two other people were taken into custody on Friday.

The assailant had arrived in France illegally in 2009 but had since obtained residency papers, a police source said. He had just moved to Rambouillet.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen questioned why the attacker had been able to settle in the country, and hit back at recent criticism about police brutality in France.

"We need to get back to reason: supporting our police, expelling illegal immigrants and eradicating Islamism," she wrote on Twitter.

About 30 police officers raided the suspect's home in Rambouillet on Friday, Agence France-Presse reporters said. At the same time, police in the Paris region searched the home of the person who had sheltered Jamel G. when he first arrived in France, sources said.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who visited officers in Rambouillet, said security would be stepped up at stations nationwide.

France has been repeatedly targeted by Islamist attackers since 2015, with a series of incidents in the past year keeping terrorism and security a leading concern.

Mr Macron's government has introduced legislation to tackle religious extremism, which would make it easier for the government to close places of worship and track foreign funding of mosques. The Bill has been condemned by critics who see it as stigmatising Muslims.

Last September, a Pakistani man with a meat cleaver wounded two people outside the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had printed cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.

Last October, a young Chechen refugee beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, who had showed some of the caricatures to his pupils.

Later that month, three people were killed when a Tunisian who had recently arrived in France went on a stabbing spree in a church in the city of Nice.

In the most serious recent attack against French police, three officers and one police employee in Paris were stabbed to death in October 2019 by an information technology specialist colleague who was then shot dead. He was found to have shown an interest in radical Islam.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE