Man With Knife and Fake Explosives Shot Dead Outside Paris Police Station

By AURELIEN BREEDEN and ANNA POLONYI

PARIS — French police officers fatally shot a man who was wielding a cleaver and yelling “Allahu akbar” as he tried to attack a police station in northern Paris on Thursday, setting off alarms as France marked the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The man arrived in front of the police station on the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or at 11:30 a.m. with a meat cleaver, wearing what turned out to be a fake explosives belt. He then brandished the knife and yelled “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” before police officers opened fire. Witnesses said the officers had ordered the man several times to stop and step back before shooting him.

The office of the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, on Thursday evening confirmed that the assailant’s fingerprints matched those of a man who was convicted of theft in southern France in 2013.

The man told the police at the time that he was named Sallah Ali, that he was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1995, and that he was homeless, the prosecutor’s office said.

Thursday’s attack prompted the temporary closing of schools, shops and streets. The man’s body lay on the sidewalk outside the police station for more than an hour and 20 minutes, covered with a white cloth. A robot was deployed, and after that, two dogs and then an investigator wearing heavy gear inspected the man’s jacket, before determining that it was a fake suicide vest.

Investigators found a cellphone on the man, a piece of paper with the flag of the Islamic State on it, and an “unequivocal handwritten claim of responsibility” in Arabic, according to Mr. Molins’s office, which said it was investigating the attack as an attempted terrorist assassination of someone in a position of public authority. The police are also investigating whether Mr. Ali had any real ties to the Islamic State.

Mr. Molins did not detail the content of the handwritten claim, but French news media reported that the man had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and had written that he was avenging French “attacks in Syria.”

Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, speaking on the i-Télé news channel on Thursday evening, said that investigators still needed to clarify whether the attacker was radicalized or if he was mentally unstable.

“A fake explosives belt, the cries, the allegiance in his pocket, these are signs that could link him to a network, but at the same time these could be the signs of someone unbalanced,” Ms. Taubira said. “The investigation will clarify all of this.”

Ms. Taubira added that there was an “extremely heavy climate” in France that might push people with “psychological weaknesses” to act in similar ways.

The police station is in the 18th Arrondissement, a multicultural district that has a large immigrant population but that is also rapidly gentrifying.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited the station after the attack and praised the “great courage” of the police.

The episode occurred a year after gunmen carried out attacks in and near Paris, including on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket, killing 17 people. The assault also comes less than two months after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks here, which left 130 dead.

Most of the participants in the Nov. 13 attacks wore explosives vests, six of which were detonated that night: three at the national soccer stadium north of Paris, two at the Bataclan concert hall, and one at a restaurant in central Paris.

In addition, a man who died in a police raid on Nov. 18 on a hide-out in the northern Paris suburb of St.-Denis — who has not yet been identified but who investigators say they believe took part in the attacks — also detonated a suicide vest.

The attack on Thursday occurred a little over an hour after President François Hollande concluded a speech to forces at the Paris police department during which he warned that terrorism was still threatening the country.

Mr. Hollande thanked the police and security forces and paid tribute to the three officers who were killed in the attacks last January. “We will never forget them,” he said. “They died so that we may live free.”

Mr. Hollande added that over the past year, nearly 200 people had been barred from leaving France on suspicion of seeking to join terrorist groups in Syria or Iraq and that over 50 foreigners had been barred from entering the country.

He also urged the security and intelligence services in France to do better at cooperating with each other.

“Faced with these kinds of adversaries, it is crucial that each department work in perfect coordination, in the greatest transparency, and that they share all the information that they have,” Mr. Hollande said.

查理周刊恐攻周年 法警局遇「詐」彈客…擊斃

七日是法國巴黎查理周刊恐怖攻擊事件一周年，一名男子七日戴著假的自殺炸彈腰帶持刀作勢要攻擊巴黎一處警察局，當場遭警方擊斃，附近至少兩所學校緊急關閉。

去年一月七日，查理周刊辦公室遭凱達恐怖組織成員持槍闖入掃射，包括三名警察共十三人遇害，震驚全球；加上去年底巴黎遭恐怖攻擊造成一百卅人死亡事件，法國總統歐蘭德七日在查理周刊事件紀念活動上，特別對警方及安全人員表達敬意，並誓言加強對抗恐怖主義。

法國警方早已加強相關戒備，七日中午卻傳出一名男子意圖攻擊警局事件，巴黎警方表示，這起事件比較像是恐怖主義而非普通犯罪。警方表示，男子在警局前多次高喊「真主至上」，後遭警方擊斃；警方後來發現男子身上戴的是假的自殺炸彈腰帶。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/world/europe/paris-attacker-knife-police-station.html

Video：After a knife-wielding attacker was killed by the police in Paris, the interior minister of France said the authorities were investigating the case and Parisians talked about their fears.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000004130423/aftermath-of-paris-shooting.html

2016-01-08．聯合報．A13．國際．布魯塞爾記者蕭白雪