PARIS: French investigators were Sunday studying a video claiming responsibility for the meat cleaver attack in Paris that targeted satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo as the government condemned an act of “Islamist terrorism.”
Six people were still in custody, including the suspected perpetrator of Friday’s attack that left two badly wounded outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices in Paris.
The man is an 18-year-old born in Pakistan named as Hassan A, according to a source close to the investigation.
Held since Friday, he told investigators he had carried out the attack to avenge the republication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo, which was the target of a January 2015 massacre by Islamist gunmen.
The investigators were now seeking to authenticate a video which they believe could show Hassan A. announcing he was about to carry out the attack.
“We see him crying, chanting. He claims in advance his act by evoking the republication of the caricatures,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
“It is a kind of manifesto, he announces he is going to act,” the source said, adding: “It is not a claim of allegiance to an organization.”
The suspect was born in the Pakistan town of Mandi Bahauddin and while he speaks a little French he has needed a translator during questioning, the source close to the investigation said.
He is believed to have entered France three years ago while still a minor and had showed no risk of radicalization despite once being stopped for carrying a weapon.
The two people wounded were employees of prize-winning TV production agency Premieres Lignes, whose offices are in the same block that used to house Charlie Hebdo in the center of the capital .
However it is not believed that the two, whose lives are not in danger, were specifically targeted.
The man mistakenly believed Charlie Hebdo’s offices were still in that building and wanted to attack journalists from the magazine, according to his statement to investigators.
One person arrested was released overnight. But as well as the main suspect eight others were still being held.
They include his younger brother and people who lived with him at his last place of residence in northern Paris.
Police on Sunday also detained a woman who had been living at the same residence, a judicial source said, without giving further details.
The arrests were aimed at understanding the “environment” of the main suspect, a source close to the case said, adding: “Everything leads us to think he acted alone.”
An Algerian man, detained close to the scene of the attack, had also been released. His lawyer said her client had actually been “heroically” chasing the attacker.
The attack came three weeks into a trial in Paris of suspected accomplices in the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo, a policewoman and a Jewish supermarket that left 17 people dead.
The bloodshed heralded a wave of Islamist violence in France that has so far left 258 people dead.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin acknowledged that the authorities could have become complacent over the terror risk after a relative lull in high-profile attacks in recent years.
“We are in an extremely critical situation, we are at war with Islamist terrorism. Maybe, collectively, we put this behind us,” he said.
Darmanin said the threat was still real, noting 32 attacks had been foiled over the last three years. “It is around once a month,” he said.
President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government has in recent weeks begun using increasingly tough rhetoric on domestic security issues in what analysts see as a shift to the right.
Macron’s anti-terror adviser Laurent Nunez told AFP that France had “improved in the detection” of extremists but “still had to tighten the net more.”
France checks video claim for Paris knife attack
https://arab.news/w3avm
France checks video claim for Paris knife attack
- Friday’s attack left two badly wounded outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices in Paris
- Six people are still in custody, including the suspected perpetrator
Nobel laureate Machado says US helped her leave Venezuela, vows return
- Machado emerged on a hotel balcony in Oslo to cheering supporters early Thursday
- “We did get support from the United States government to get here,” Machado said
OSLO: Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado said on Thursday that the United States helped her get to Norway from hiding in Venezuela, expressing support for US military action against her country and vowing to return home.
Machado, who vanished in January after challenging the rule of President Nicolas Maduro, emerged on a hotel balcony in Oslo to cheering supporters early Thursday after several days of confusion over her whereabouts.
“We did get support from the United States government to get here,” Machado told a press conference when asked by AFP about whether Washington had helped.
The Wall Street Journal reported that she wore a wig and a disguise on the high-risk journey, leaving her hide-out in a Caracas suburb on Monday for a coastal fishing village, where she took a fishing skiff across the Caribbean Sea to Curacao.
The newspaper said the US military was informed to avoid the boat being targeted by airstrikes. Once on the island, she took a private jet to Oslo early on Wednesday.
Machado thanked those who “risked their lives” to get her to Norway but it was not immediately clear how or when she will return to Venezuela, which has said it would consider her a fugitive if she left.
“Of course, the risk of going back, perhaps it’s higher, but it’s always worthwhile. And I’ll be back in Venezuela, I have no doubt,” she added.
Machado has been hailed for her fight for democracy but also criticized for aligning herself with US President Donald Trump, to whom she has dedicated her Nobel, and for inviting foreign intervention in her country.
- Military build-up -
The United States has launched a military build-up in the Caribbean in recent weeks and deadly strikes on what Washington says are drug-smuggling boats.
“I believe every country has the right to defend themselves,” Machado told reporters Thursday.
“I believe that President Trump’s actions have been decisive to reach the point where we are right now, in which the regime is weaker than ever, because the regime previously thought that they could do anything,” she continued.
Late Wednesday, Trump said the United States had seized a “very large” oil tanker near Venezuela, which Caracas denounced as “blatant theft.”
Maduro maintains that US operations are aimed at toppling his government and seizing Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Machado first appeared on a balcony of the Grand Hotel in the middle of the night, waving and blowing kisses to supporters chanting “libertad” (“freedom“) below.
On the ground, she climbed over metal barriers to get closer to her supporters, many of whom hugged her and presented her with rosaries.
She said she has missed much of her children’s lives while hiding, including graduations and weddings.
- ‘ Political risk’ -
Machado won the Peace Prize for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
She has accused Maduro of stealing Venezuela’s July 2024 election, from which she was banned — a claim backed by much of the international community.
She last appeared in public on January 9 in Caracas, where she protested Maduro’s inauguration for his third term.
The decision to leave Venezuela and join the Nobel festivities in Oslo comes at both personal and political risk.
“She risks being arrested if she returns even if the authorities have shown more restraint with her than with many others, because arresting her would have a very strong symbolic value,” said Benedicte Bull, a professor specializing in Latin America at the University of Oslo.
While Machado is the ” undisputed” leader of the opposition, “if she were to stay away in exile for a long time, I think that would change and she would gradually lose political influence,” Bull said.
In her acceptance speech read by one of her daughters Wednesday, Machado denounced kidnappings and torture under Maduro’s tenure, calling them “crimes against humanity” and “state terrorism, deployed to bury the will of the people.”
