A convicted radical who killed a French police couple in an IS-inspired stabbing was carrying a “hit list” of VIPs and urged followers to turn Euro 2016 into a “graveyard”, officials said On June 13, 2016. The assault in a small town northwest of Paris was the first deadly strike in France since the coordinated attacks in the capital by an Islamic State cell in November, which killed 130 people.Larossi Abballa, who was under surveillance after serving time for links to jihadist networks, first stabbed 42-year-old Jean-Baptiste Salvaing outside his home. He then holed up inside the house with Salvaing’s 36-year-old partner Jessica Schneider and the couple’s three-year-old son.Shortly afterwards he killed Schneider by slitting her throat./ AFP PHOTO /
by Paul AUBRIAT and Clare BYRNE in Paris
MAGNANVILLE, France (AFP) — A convicted radical who killed a French police couple in an IS-inspired stabbing was carrying a “hit list” of VIPs and urged followers to turn Euro 2016 into a “graveyard”, officials said Tuesday.
Monday’s assault in a small town northwest of Paris was the first deadly strike in France since the coordinated attacks in the capital by an Islamic State cell in November, which killed 130 people.
In the wake of the attack in Magnanville, police unions said officers will now be able to carry weapons while off-duty beyond a state of emergency that was declared after the November attacks, but which is due to expire next month.
In a separate incident Tuesday a man with known psychiatric problems stabbed a teenage girl in the western French city of Rennes, saying he heard voices telling him to make a “sacrifice” for Ramadan.
The 32-year-old man was sent to a psychiatric hospital after stabbing the girl twice in the wrist and once in the abdomen, leaving her in serious condition, prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet told AFP.
In Monday night’s assault, Larossi Abballa, who was under surveillance after serving time for links to jihadist networks, stabbed 42-year-old police commander Jean-Baptiste Salvaing outside his home.
He took Salvaing’s 36-year-old partner Jessica Schneider and the couple’s three-year-old son hostage in the house and killed the woman by slitting her throat.
Abballa then posted on Facebook a live 13-minute video of himself with the child in which he admitted the murders and urged fellow jihadists to carry out more bloodshed.
The 25-year-old was killed during a police raid which ended the standoff.
The child escaped unharmed but in shock.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Abballa, who came from the nearby suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, told police negotiators before his death that he had sworn loyalty to IS three weeks earlier.
He told police he was responding to a call by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to “kill infidels, at home, with their families.”
IS claimed Monday’s attack in a statement issued by the Amaq news agency, a regular conduit for IS announcements.
Three suspects held
Molins said police had found a hit list at the scene naming police and VIPS including journalists and rappers to be targeted.
They also found three knives, one of them covered in blood.
Three associates of Abballa have been arrested over the attack, Molins said.
One of them was among seven people convicted alongside Abballa in 2013 over their involvement in a network recruiting jihadists for Pakistan, Molins added.
Monday’s stabbings comes with France on high alert during the Euro tournament, with up to 90,000 police and security guards deployed to ensure the safety of local and visiting fans.
In his Facebook video, which was seen by AFP, Abballa called on supporters to attack police, journalists, public figures, prison guards and rappers and to “turn the Euro into a graveyard.” The video was later removed.
The killings took place barely 36 hours after a gunman claiming to be acting in the name of IS shot dead 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the worst mass shooting in US history.
“A new horror threshold has been breached,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament, which observed a minute’s silence for the victims of both the Orlando and the Magnanville attacks.
‘Paying a heavy price’
The couple’s deaths are the first police fatalities in a jihadist attack since January 2015 when gunmen attacked the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, a Jewish supermarket and the police, killing 17 people including three officers.
A month later, three soldiers protecting a Jewish community centre in the French Riviera city of Nice were attacked by a man with a knife.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday’s killings showed the gravity of the threat to security forces “who are paying a heavy price to ensure the safety of the French”.
Police unions announced they had secured the right for officers to remain armed while off-duty, which has until now only been allowed under the terms of the state of emergency declared in November.
“The minister announced to us that the authorisation to bear arms would be extended beyond the state of emergency,” said Yves Lefebvre of the Unite SGP-FO group, after he and other union leaders met Cazeneuve.
The state of emergency is due to run out on July 26.
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