French judges on Saturday handed preliminary charges of attempted murder to a man suspected of stabbing four young children and two adults in a park in the French Alps town of Annecy, an attack that reverberated across France and beyond.
The suspect is a 31-year-old Syrian refugee with permanent residency in Sweden. His name was not released.
The lead prosecutor, Line Bonnet-Mathis, told a news conference that the man was presented to investigating judges in the lakeside town and handed charges of attempted murder and armed resistance. He is in custody pending further investigation.
The prosecutor said the victims are no longer in life-threatening condition after Thursday’s stabbing rampage. The children, between 22 months and 3 years old, remain at a hospital in nearby Grenoble, where French President Emmanuel Macron visited them on Friday.
The six victims came from four different countries: France, Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal.
The suspect was examined by psychiatrists who deemed him fit to face charges, the prosecutor said. She said that the motive for the attack remained unclear but did not appear to be terrorism-related.
Witnesses said they heard the attacker mention his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ, according to the prosecutor, who said he had Christian objects with him at the time of the attack.
Police detained the suspect after bystanders – notably, a Catholic pilgrim who repeatedly swung at the attacker with his backpack – sought to deter him.
'Out of danger'
On Friday, Macron said two young French cousins who were the most critically injured had stabilised, and that doctors were “very confident”. Two wounded girls from Britain and the Netherlands had also improved, he said.
A critically injured adult – who was both knifed and wounded by a shot that police fired as they detained the suspected attacker – was regaining consciousness, the French president added.
Portugal’s foreign ministry said the seriously injured adult is Portuguese and “now out of danger”. He was wounded “trying to stop the attacker from fleeing from the police”, it said.
The pilgrim, Henri, a 24-year-old who is on a nine-month walking and hitchhiking tour of France's cathedrals, said he had set off to visit another abbey when the horror unfolded in front of him. The attacker slashed at him, but Henri held his ground and used a weighty backpack he was carrying to swing at the assailant.
Henri’s father said his son “told me that the Syrian was incoherent, saying lots of strange things in different languages, invoking his father, his mother, all the Gods”.
The suspect’s profile fuelled renewed criticism from far-right and conservative politicians about French immigration policies. But authorities noted that the suspect entered France legally, because he has permanent residency status in Sweden. Sweden and France are both members of the EU and Europe’s border-free travel zone.
He applied for asylum in France last year and was refused a few days before the attack, on the grounds that he had already won asylum in Sweden in 2013, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
