French Justice charges the jihadist detained for the murder next to the Eiffel Tower
The French Justice charged this Wednesday Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab with the stabbing murder last Saturday of a German tourist of Filipino origin next to the Eiffel Tower, shouting “Allah is the greatest” and for trying to kill two other people .
The investigative court indicted this 26-year-old French-Iranian for three crimes, as requested by the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT), as confirmed to the French press on Wednesday by the detainee's lawyer, Safya Akorri.
The charges are terrorist murder, attempted terrorist murder and terrorist association of criminals.
The PNAT has also demanded that the imprisonment of Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab be ordered, a decision that after the accusation corresponds to the so-called judge of liberties and detention.
This instance ordered that he remain in provisional detention and in solitary confinement, as Perros also confirmed to the media.
Rajabpour-Minyandoab, who claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Islamic State, was arrested immediately after his attack near the Eiffel Tower thanks to the intervention of police officers, who subdued him with an electric pulse gun.
Hours later, his parents and an acquaintance of his were also arrested, but the three were released without charge after being questioned.
Failure in psychiatric follow-up
The attacker was under the radar of the French secret services since his release from prison in 2020, after having served a five-year terrorism sentence precisely for having prepared a violent attack in the La Defense business district in Paris.
He was also the subject of psychiatric monitoring and his mother recently warned law enforcement that she had detected changes in his behavior that she found disturbing.
But the Police did not have any element to justify his arrest and when they proposed to the mother that she request the ex officio detention of her son, she finally did not want to.
These circumstances have generated controversy in France. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has spoken of a failure in psychiatric monitoring and has proposed a legislative reform so that the authorities can intervene in similar cases, at least to force an evaluation of the mental state of a person who is believed to be could commit an attack.
Darmanin explained that around 30% of people booked for Islamic radicalism have psychiatric problems.
The French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, has also spoken out about possible inefficiencies in the face of the terrorist threat – and in the face of criticism from the opposition – who, in an interview published this Wednesday by the newspaper Le Figaro, assured that the Government must “examine all the links in the chain” and “go further” with resources for follow-up, if necessary.
But in the face of the 2024 Paris Olympics, he promised to mobilize the necessary resources and pointed out that although we should not be “naive”, we should not be carried away by misinformation either.
“We have thwarted 43 attacks since 2017 and 1,500 people have been arrested and brought to justice on charges related to terrorism.. We are active in these issues,” stated Borne.