A counter-terrorism soldier on patrol was attacked with a knife on Monday evening in Paris, near the Gare de l’Est train station. The perpetrator has been produced, Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced on social media site X, according to MTI. According to police sources, the soldier suffered a minor wound on his left shoulder, is conscious, and was taken to hospital.
According to BFM news, also from the police, the suspected perpetrator is a 40-year-old French citizen who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The self-proclaimed Catholic man received French citizenship in 2006 at the age of 22. After that, he had several issues with the police due to violent acts, and in 2018, proceedings were initiated once morest him for murder committed with a knife, but due to his abnormal mental state, he was not punishable, psychiatric he was treated, but lived on the street as a homeless person. The authorities are not treating the attack as a terrorist attack.
The attack happened just over a week before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris, which will be secured by around 18,000 soldiers in addition to 45,000 gendarmes.
“Our thoughts are with the soldier who was wounded tonight at the Gare de l’Est train station, who served in the anti-terrorist operation Sentinel,” wrote Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu on the X social media site. “Support and thanks to our armed forces, which are involved more than ever in guaranteeing the safety of the French,” he added.
The sight of armed soldiers is commonplace in Paris
Operation Sentinel was launched by the French authorities following the Islamist attack once morest the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Since then, the patrolling of armed soldiers has become a common phenomenon in the capital, a part of the daily life of Parisians.
The last time a counter-terrorism soldier was attacked in Paris was in February 2017. At that time, an Egyptian citizen attacked the soldiers patrolling the building at the entrance of the Louvre museum with a brush cutter, slightly injuring one of them, who in turn fired five shots at him. The knifeman shouted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is most powerful) during the attack. The perpetrator was sentenced to thirty years in prison in 2021 for a terrorist attack.
Dangerous persons were identified before the Olympics
As Index also reported, before next week’s pentathlon games, around three and a half thousand potentially dangerous persons have already been excluded from the Olympics. The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced that the exclusion of persons who might pose a threat to the safety of the games was the result of regarding 770,000 checks.
THE PRIME MINISTER STATED THAT AMONG THOSE REJECTED, THERE WERE “SEVERAL DOZENS OF ISLAMISTS, RADICALS CLOSE TO FAR-LEFT AND FAR-RIGHT CIRCLES”.
The Minister of the Interior also touched on the fact that, as part of the security measures, 800 volunteer applicants who wanted to participate in the Olympic and Paralympic Games were rejected at the beginning of April, and the employment of a thousand private agents was also waived. He added that many of those who wanted to carry the Olympic flame were screened out, and 13 people who applied to be members of the torch relay were checked and found to have a criminal background.
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