France's anti-terrorism prosecutors requested on Wednesday that the man who allegedly fatally stabbed a tourist and wounded two other people over the weekend near the Eiffel Tower be given preliminary charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist organization.
The suspect, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, will go before an investigating magistrate who ultimately decides the charges.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab, 26, is accused of killing a German-Filipino tourist at a bridge near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night. He was under surveillance for suspected Islamic radicalization at the time, and had been convicted and served prison time for a planned attack that never took place.
The stabbing has drawn special concern from French authorities less than a year before the 2024 Paris Olympics, whose opening ceremony is planned along the Seine river. It has also raised questions about how people convicted of terrorism-linked crimes can roam freely after serving their sentences.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab told police he was concerned about the situation of Muslims, notably in Afghanistan and the Middle East amid the war between Israel and Hamas.
He recorded a video before the attack in which he swore allegiance to the Islamic State group and expressed support for Islamic extremists in various areas including Africa, Iraq, Syria, Egypt’s Sinai, Yemen, Iran and Pakistan, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said. He was under psychiatric treatment and was on a special list for feared radicals, the prosecutor confirmed.
The prosecutor's office asked that the suspect, born in France of Iranian origin, be handed the preliminary charges while in a “legal state of relapse,” meaning he could repeat offenses, a statement said.
The prosecutor also sought a preliminary charge of association with terrorist criminals for the preparation of one or more crimes targeting people.
Under French law, preliminary charges precede any indictment, which comes after a thorough investigation.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab was born in 1997 in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, outside Paris, to a family with no religious affiliation. He converted to Islam at the age of 18 and quickly adhered to Islamic extremist ideology, Ricard told a news conference Sunday. In 2016, the suspect was convicted and imprisoned for four years, until 2020, on a charge of planning violence.
