Knife attack in Rambouillet

A man stabbed a police officer at the Rambouillet police station in Yvelines on Friday, April 23, before being shot dead by another agent, as announced by the public prosecutor of Versailles . The 49-year-old victim had his throat cut.

According to a police source, the facts occurred around 2:20 pm in the airlock of the police station of this city of nearly 26,000 inhabitants, located about sixty kilometers southwest of Paris. The administrative officer, in cardiopulmonary arrest, died on the spot, despite the intervention of the firefighters.

According to the first elements gathered by witnesses on the spot, the attacker, a man of Tunisian nationality in a legal situation, was seen making several passages in front of the police station, his phone in his hand. He would then have taken advantage of the victim’s entry into the double-door security chamber of the police headquarters to rush after him and wait for the door to close, thus locking the electronic control device of the police station. Entrance.

Unknown motivations
The individual then allegedly brandished a knife, in front of officials at the police station reception desk, on the other side of the secure glass of the airlock, before stabbing the administrative officer. After unlocking the airlock door, one of the policemen opened fire twice on the assailant. He died after being hit by the two shots from the policeman.

“Witnesses claim to have heard the attacker shout: ‘Allahu akbar!’ twice inside the airlock, but they were on the roadway, several meters from the place, ”said a source on the spot. According to several corroborating sources, he had viewed Islamist propaganda videos on his phone just before the attack.

The National Antiterrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) took up the facts and opened a flagrant investigation of the heads of assassination on a person holding public authority in connection with a terrorist company and terrorist association, jointly entrusted to the Directorate. Central Judicial Police (DCPJ) and the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI).

On the spot, Jean-François Ricard, boss of the PNAT, later explained that he had taken up this case for “the very course of the facts – which includes elements of identification -, (…) the modality of the crime , the person [that was] the victim, but also [for] the comments made by the author at the time of the realization of the facts ”.

With the investigations only just beginning, the investigation services still have little information to establish the motivation of the attacker, unknown to the specialized services.

If the PNAT seized, less than three hours after the fact, it is because of a series of recurring elements in the terrorist attacks committed in recent years. The first of these is the modus operandi: a knife attack. Then come other elements inclining to consider the terrorist hypothesis: the target (the police), the day (Friday, holy day of Muslims, often chosen for terrorist attacks), as well as the stories, not confirmed at this stage, witnesses claiming to have heard the aggressor shout: “Allahu akbar!” “Referral to the PNAT allows, above all, specialized services, such as the DGSI, to rapidly deploy their specific investigative methods, particularly in terms of analyzing the computer tools used by the perpetrator of the attack.

A 36-year-old Tunisian
The assailant has been identified as Jamel G., a 36-year-old Tunisian national. He was unknown to police and intelligence. Originally from the Sousse region, in eastern Tunisia, he arrived in France in 2009 and in 2019 had benefited from an exceptional employee residence permit, then a residence permit in December 2020, valid until in December 2021, according to the PNAT.

At the end of the day, a search was underway at his home, located “in a quiet district of Rambouillet”, according to a police source. Three people belonging to his entourage were also taken into police custody in the evening. A search was taking place at the home of a person who received the perpetrator of the attack on his arrival in France in 2009, according to a source close to the investigation, confirming information from Le Point.

The victim, aged 49 and mother of two minor children, “had worked for more than twenty years at the Rambouillet police station”, according to a police source. Named Stéphanie, she was responsible in particular for the management of statistics relating to contraventions. At the time of her assault, she had just been away from home to renew her parking disc.

Macron: France will not give up anything “against Islamist terrorism”

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, arrived at the scene of the tragedy around 4.30 pm On Twitter, the head of government paid tribute to “a heroine of everyday life”, affirming the support of the nation to those close to them.

During a brief intervention in front of the cameras, Jean Castex repeated “to all French people how much [his] determination to fight terrorism in all its forms [was] intact”. He recalled that the department of Yvelines had already been affected by attacks against officials, reviving the memory of “the heinous attack in Magnanville, in 2016, and, more recently, [of] the assassination of Samuel Paty “.

The President of the Republic has also paid tribute to the policewoman on Twitter, assuring that “the nation is at the side of his family, his colleagues and the police”. While the attacker’s motives remained unknown, Emmanuel Macron assured that the government would not give in “against Islamist terrorism”.

The president of the Ile-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, also went there to condemn the attack. “We wanted to strike a symbol of France – because our police officers are the face of France – and destabilize the country in this quiet town,” she said.

At the end of the day, Gérald Darmanin asked the prefects to “strengthen vigilance and security measures in and around police stations and gendarmerie brigades, especially with regard to reception”.

“The horror, once again, which targets and strikes the police force,” responded the police union Alliance on Twitter. On October 3, 2019, inside the Paris Police Prefecture, a radicalized employee stabbed three police officers and an administrative agent, before being shot dead.

The first police custody in the entourage of the assailant of the Rambouillet police station (Yvelines) should help investigators on Saturday to draw the profile of this man, unknown to the police and intelligence, who stabbed an official from police.

The analysis of these elements could shed light on Jamel G.’s motivations, his career in France since leaving Tunisia, how he prepared his act, whether people helped or encouraged him in his project as well as any contacts made. online with members of the jihadist sphere.

The next few days will also be those of tributes to Stéphanie M., mother of two daughters aged 13 and 18, administrative officer of the secretariat at the police station, for 28 years “on Rambouillet”, according to a police source.

The police station is located in an affluent residential area of ​​this “quiet, almost provincial” city, underlined Mayor Véronique Matillon.

Jean Castex, who visited the site on Friday, expressed his “deep emotion” and “immense respect” for the police, writing on Twitter: “To our heroines and everyday heroes who wear every day with pride the uniform of the Republic at the risk of their life: the French know what they owe you ”.

This tragedy comes as the Yvelines police force keeps in mind the memory of the murder of a couple of police officers, stabbed in June 2016 in his house in Magnanville, by a man claiming to be from the Islamic State organization.

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Gabriel MIHAI

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