Paris attack recognized as “an act of Islamist terrorism”

The attack in Paris was “an act of Islamist terrorism,” said French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. According to him, five more alleged accomplices of the detainee were arrested, who on Friday afternoon wounded two people near the former editorial office of the notorious weekly Charlie Hebdo, which at one time published a number of cartoons of the Prophet and was attacked by terrorists in January 2015.

Hot on the heels of the crime committed on Rue Nicholas-Appert in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, the 18-year-old attacker and his accomplice were first detained. Arrested at the Place de la Bastille in Paris, LCI is an 18-year-old Pakistani citizen. Speaking Friday night on France 2 TV, Gerald Darmanin confirmed that this man, who arrived in France in 2017, was arrested a month ago for carrying a weapon, but the case did not go beyond an explanatory conversation with the police. The Pakistani, who came to Paris without his family, ostensibly in search of work, was not on the lists of the secret services, where the French and migrants with radical views are brought in.

The two detainees are currently in police custody and have been interrogated by investigators from the National Directorate of Judicial Police and French counterintelligence. The main suspect admitted the fact of a deliberate attack on the first people he came across at the editorial office. Five men, born between 1983 and 1996, were detained by police on Friday night as part of a counter-terrorism investigation into a terrorist attack in Paris, AFP reported, citing a court source. They were arrested in Pantin (Saint-Denis district) during a search in one of the houses where the attacker lived.

Two victims, a boy and a girl, who are employees of the news agency Premieres Lignes and went out to smoke, are in critical condition in the hospital. Luc Hermann, a journalist and producer for the audiovisual agency who has already experienced the horror of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, spoke about the attack on Friday. “The guys went down to smoke a cigarette in the street and were attacked by an attacker armed with a very large knife who fled from the scene of the crime. Our entire editorial office was evacuated to a nearby theater and is in shock. From the very beginning of the Charlie Hebdo trial, this street has not was protected, and the issue of ensuring its safety raises serious doubts, “the witness said.