STRASBOURG: French President Emmanuel Macron visited Strasbourg on Friday, a day after police shot dead a gunman who killed four people at the city’s Christmas market, as investigators probe whether the extremist had any accomplices.
Macron placed a white rose on the Kleber monument, which has become a makeshift memorial in the center of the city with thousands of candles, flowers and messages, as soldiers sang the Marseillaise national anthem.
“The whole nation stands with the people of Strasbourg. This is what I wanted to tell them tonight,” said Macron, who had earlier taken part in a European Union summit in Brussels.
Annette, 80, one of the hundreds attending the Strasbourg memorial, said she “came to pray for those who are no longer here.”
The eastern French city near the German border slowly began to return to normality on Friday, with its famous Christmas market reopening after 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a small-time criminal turned extremist, went on a shooting spree there on Tuesday evening.
He shot dead a Thai tourist, on holiday in Strasbourg with his wife, an Afghan who sought refuge in France some 20 years ago, a 28-year-old Italian journalist in town to cover the European parliament, and a local Frenchman who had just retired.
Twelve people were also wounded in his attack, including one who has been declared brain-dead.
The Daesh group’s propaganda arm said in a Twitter post that Chekatt was one of its “soldiers,” a claim which was dismissed on Friday by France’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner as “completely opportunistic.”
France’s anti-terror prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation was now focusing on whether anyone “helped or encouraged Chekatt preparing or carrying out” the attack — or assisted him while he was on the run.
Seven people were in police custody on Friday, including Chekatt’s parents and two brothers, Heitz said.
Another brother, who like Chekatt was on France’s anti-terror watchlist for suspected extremists, has been detained in Algeria, sources close to the inquiry told AFP.
Officials praised the massive public help and quick police reaction that led to the death of Chekatt, a career criminal with 27 convictions in four countries, late on Thursday.
He was tracked down at around 9:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) when a police patrol spotted him on a street in the Neudorf district where he was last seen after his gun and knife attack on Tuesday night.
Around 800 people called in tips to a hotline after the authorities released his name and photo Wednesday night.
Two calls in particular were “decisive” in finding Chekatt, Heitz said.
The information allowed police to cordon off an area while a helicopter equipped with a heat-seeking camera flew over the gardens.
Spotted by a police patrol, Chekatt tried to escape by entering a building.
Unable to get in the door, he turned and shot at the three officers with a handgun as they tried to approach.
Two police officers returned fire and killed him, Heitz told a press conference in Strasbourg.
Questions remain over how Chekatt was able to evade the tight security perimeter set up around the Christmas market, a prime target for extremist groups.
Around 500 police, security agents and soldiers control access at checkpoints on the bridges leading to the river island, a UN World Heritage site, that houses the market.
The goal is to “create a bubble with searches at the entry points,” Mayor Roland Ries said after the attack, while regional government representative Jean-Luc Marx said he had not determined “any flaws in the security measures.”
France has been on high alert since the start of a wave of extremist attacks in 2015, which prompted a threefold surge in the security budget for the market, to one million euros.
Chekatt, a Strasbourg native who lived in a rundown apartment block a short drive from the city center, was flagged by French security forces in 2015 as a possible Islamic extremist.
But Defense Minister Florence Parly rejected criticism that Chekatt’s presence on the extremist watchlist should have prompted a more proactive reaction from the authorities.
“You can’t... arrest someone just because you think he might do something,” Parly told Radio Classique on Friday.
Strasbourg’s deputy mayor Alain Fontanel admitted that despite patrols, plainclothes police, profilers and video surveillance, “the risks can be reduced, but not eliminated.”
“We can’t pat down and search everyone, only carry out random checks,” he said, adding that huge lines at checkpoints would only create a new potential target for terrorists.
“Someone who wants to get in an area this big with a weapon can do it,” he said.
Macron visits Strasbourg as police probe shooter’s potential accomplices
Macron visits Strasbourg as police probe shooter’s potential accomplices
- Seven people are in police custody, including shooter Cherif Chekatt’s parents and two brothers
- Another brother, who like Chekatt was on France’s anti-terror watchlist for suspected extremists, has been detained in Algeria
Poland slow to counter Russia’s ‘existential threat’: general
- The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size
- Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039
WARSAW: Russia poses an “existential threat” to Poland and its military is lagging, the country’s armed forces chief warned senior officials on Wednesday.
Poland, the largest country on NATO’s eastern flank and a neighbor of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, is the western alliance’s largest spender in relative terms.
This year, the country is allocating 4.8 percent of its GDP to defense, just shy of the alliance’s five percent target to be met by 2035.
However, that record defense spending was not enough to “make up for nearly three decades of chronic underfunding of the armed forces,” General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff, argued at the meeting, which included top officers, the defense minister and Poland’s president.
The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size.
Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039, compared with around 210,000 at present.
As a result of a lack of updates, some new Polish units “are not achieving combat readiness,” due to insufficient equipment, rather than a personnel shortage, the general argued.
Meanwhile, he added, “the Russian Federation remains an existential threat to Poland.”
Russia “is constantly reorganizing its forces, drawing on the lessons from its aggression in Ukraine, and building up the capacity for a conventional conflict with NATO countries,” he stressed.
Poland is to receive 43.7 billion euros ($51,5 billion) in loans under the European Union’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme, designed to strengthen Europe’s defensive capabilities.
Warsaw plans to use these funds to boost domestic arms production.
The Polish government claims that Poland will be able to access SAFE finance even if President Karol Nawrocki — backed by Poland’s conservative-nationalist opposition — vetos a law setting out domestic arrangements for its implementation.
Law and Justice (PiS) — the main opposition party — argues that SAFE could become a new tool for Brussels to place undue pressure on Poland, thanks to a planned mechanism for monitoring the funds, which they claim risks undermining Polish sovereignty.
