French police launch terrorism inquiry after two killed in stabbing

French counter-terrorism police are to
investigate a stabbing attack in which two people were killed and five injured.
A 33-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker was
arrested after the attack at Romans-sur-Isère, in the Drôme department in
south-east France, on Saturday morning.
Two other men, both said to be from Sudan,
one of whom shared a flat with the suspect, are also being questioned in police
custody.
The national counter-terrorism brigade,
PNAT, announced on Saturday evening that it had opened an investigation into
“killings and attempted killings connected to a terrorist organisation” and
“criminal terrorist conspiracy”.
The suspect, who arrived in France in 2017
and was granted refugee status and given a 10-year residency permit, moved to
Romans-sur-Isère in January after two years in Moras-en-Valloire, to the north,
where he worked in a leather goods store.
Aurélien Ferlay, the mayor of
Moras-en-Valloire, told French television that the man had undergone
professional training in leatherwork supported by social services and the
charity Secours Catholique.
Ferlay said he was “both stupefied and
horrified by this attack”, which he said had left everyone “totally mystified”.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, made us think
he would carry out this terrible act. He went to work on his bicycle, he was
polite with my staff and me and he posed absolutely no problem in our
community,” Ferlay said.
The local newspaper, the Dauphiné Libéré,
said the man had been working in a factory at Romans-sur-Isère, a town of
33,000 residents, and was unknown to French and European police and the
security services.
A statement from the counter-terrorism
prosecutor’s officer said a search of the suspect’s apartment had uncovered
“handwritten documents with religious connotations”. It said the as yet
unidentified author of the documents “complains in particular that he lives in
a country of sinners”.
The suspect entered a tobacconist shop on
Saturday morning and allegedly attacked the owner and injured the shopkeeper’s
wife when she tried to help her husband. He then went to a nearby butcher’s
where witnesses said he jumped over the counter, grabbed another knife and
stabbed a customer before running out and attacking passersby in the street.
A computer engineer aged 44 was killed
while inside the butcher’s shop. The second casualty, named as Julien Vinson,
55, the owner of La Charrette, a cafe theatre, was stabbed in the street while
trying to protect his 12-year-old son.
A third man, aged 63, was in a serious
condition in hospital and four other people – two men, 65 and 59, and two
women, 48 and 49 – were also injured.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron,
described the attack as “an odious act that has brought grief to a country
already sorely tested in recent weeks”.
The interior minister, Christophe Castaner,
who travelled to Romans-sur-Isère after the attack, referred to the suspect’s
“terrorist background”.
He said: “I commend the full engagement of
the security forces who quickly apprehended the suspect and who are now
carrying out the investigation.”