A Pakistan-born man has admitted to slashing two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, investigators said on Saturday, with nine people now detained over what the government condemned as “Islamist terrorism.”
The 18-year-old, named by investigators as Hassan A, said that he wanted to avenge the republication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by the satirical weekly, which in January 2015 was targeted in a massacre carried out by extremist gunmen.
The cleaver attack on Friday came three weeks into a trial in Paris of suspected accomplices in the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo as well as a policewoman and a Jewish supermarket that left 17 people dead.
Photo: Bloomberg
A source close to the investigation told reporters that “everything points to [the suspect] acting alone,” adding that he was not flagged for suspected radicalization, speaks a little French and had planned to start training as a builder.
However, eight other people were also under arrest following two more detentions on Saturday.
The two new individuals arrested were the suspect’s younger brother and another acquaintance, a judicial source said.
Hassan A, who said he was born in Mandi Bahauddin, Pakistan, and is 18 years old, “takes responsibility for his action,” a source close to the investigation said.
The man said during questioning that he places his actions “in the context of the republication of cartoons” of the Prophet Mohammed in Charlie Hebdo on the eve of the trial opening.
The people wounded were employees of prize-winning TV production agency Premieres Lignes, whose offices are in the same block in central Paris that used to house Charlie Hebdo.
The man mistakenly believed Charlie Hebdo’s offices were still in that building and wanted to attack journalists from the magazine, a source close to the inquiry told reporters.
Charlie Hebdo moved offices after the 2015 attack and its current address is kept secret for security reasons.
The two victims were badly wounded, but their lives are not in danger.
French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin on Friday said that the attack was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism.”
Anti-terror prosecutors have opened an investigation.
Five of the individuals detained were in an apartment in Pantin in the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, the last presumed address of the suspected attacker.
The suspected attacker, who arrived from Pakistan three years ago, was believed to have last lived in a small apartment in a four-story building in the district.
“He was very polite. I often saw him sitting on the landing with his telephone,” said one neighbor, who identified herself as Josiane.
Police late on Friday released another man who was detained close to the scene of the attack, but whose lawyer said had actually been chasing the attacker.
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