She is undoubtedly the person who knows him best in the world. The one who gave him life twenty-six years ago. The one who tried to transmit to him the humanist values of France, his adopted country. The one who, today, no longer even wants to call him her “son” but “the individual”. Too ashamed. During her custody at the criminal brigade, the mother of Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, the young man who killed a tourist with a knife and hammer and injured two other people on Saturday December 2 evening near the Bir-Hakeim bridge (Paris 15th century), looked back on her life and the education that she and her husband instilled in their children.
A hearing interspersed with apologies and messages of compassion for the victim of the attack. “It’s not a joke,” assures a source close to the matter. The sky fell on their heads. This family is honest and respectful people. »
VIDEO. Attack in Paris: the deadly route of the attacker, from the Bir-Hakeim bridge to the Passy park
In any case, it is a priori a model of assimilation. Parents who have worked all their lives, telling their two children how lucky they are to be French. For the son, the first name Iman was even Frenchized. No Persian name for the girl either. “A secular and caring family with an atheist father, uses the same source. Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab’s conversion to Islam, after the death of his maternal grandmother in 2015, was not well received. It is linked to the history of Iran. »
The mother “fell in love” with France more than forty years ago
The arrival of this family in France followed the Islamic revolution in 1979 in Iran. The woman who would become the terrorist’s mother then came from a bourgeois intellectual background. Facing investigators, she places Iran during the Shah’s era as a “little Paris” with “as many freedoms” as in France. When the shah was overthrown, part of the population preferred to leave the country rather than comply with the religious rules of Ayatollah Khomeini. The young woman is sent to France to continue her studies. She doesn’t speak a word of our language. But she fell “in love” with this country, a “jewel” she says.
Holder, in Iran, of a master’s degree in educational sciences, she became a simple employee at the Carrefour store in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). She will stay there for more than forty years. “A very nice lady at reception,” confirms a retiree from the city. Her first husband, Iranian like her, died of cancer in the early 1990s. She then married her husband’s brother. A “marriage of love”, she assures. The two children, who were born in France, grew up in a loving family where the values of the Republic were instilled. Religion ? “Humanist” used to describe the immigrant couple.
From childhood, Armand seemed a little aloof. He poses no problem, he is very good in class, but is shy and withdrawn. His father, a manager in a transport company, signed him up for football to try to socialize him. But the child seems apathetic. No doubt “psychological problems”, his mother would have rewound in police custody. At high school in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), the teenager isolates himself more and more. He talks to himself, starts laughing for no reason. Sometimes his gaze is empty. His mother suggests that he go see a psychologist. “I’m not crazy,” his son would have replied.
He would have heard voices telling him to slaughter people
The announcement of his conversion to Islam, when the young man was 18, went down badly in the family. “The parents preferred their son to have an intellectual approach to religion,” explains one of their relatives. The father, an atheist but whose own father was Muslim, questions his child about his beliefs. He understands that Armand doesn’t know much about this religion.
The young man will then continue his religious education alone in his room, behind his computer. It was during this period that he was recruited on the networks, discussing with several jihadists. Spotted by the police, he was arrested in July 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison, one year of which was suspended. For the whole family, it’s a massive blow. The mother, now 62 years old, blames herself for not having supported her son more in religion.
In prison, between Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) and Fresnes (Val-de-Marne), the young man found himself in solitary confinement and then in the radicalized section. It was within four walls that doctors diagnosed schizophrenia in the young man. At least that’s what the parents told the police, according to a source close to the investigation. At that time, the future terrorist seemed to alternate between paradoxical phases between rejection of religion and radicalization. Above all, we understand that he is feeling bad, that he hears voices telling him that he must slit people’s throats.
He ate sausage, drank alcohol and listened to Mylène Farmer
The drug treatment offers him a respite. Especially since he follows it scrupulously. When he was released from detention in March 2020, he swore that he no longer had a religion. His parents believe it. The father remembers that his son eats sausage, the mother that he drinks alcohol and that he listens to Mylène Farmer. Was it a taqiya ruse, this traditional practice in Islam of hiding one’s faith in hostile terrain?
VIDEO. Terrorist attack in Paris: Darmanin “limited in his action” in the face of Islamist radicals suffering from mental illnesses
In any case, he then announced to his loved ones, at the end of 2020, a new conversion to Islam. On a judicial level, he respects all his obligations, particularly medical monitoring. When the latter comes to an end, her mother takes over “like a police officer”, she allegedly repeated to investigators. Last October, she even went to the police station to ask for help. Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab indeed seems very marked by the fate of the Gazans. He ruminates. The mother tries to explain to him that the situation is more complex than he thinks and, after all, this is not happening “at home”. In vain.
“I ask for forgiveness from France,” the mother repeated during her custody, recalling her “love” for this country. She would also have begged “forgiveness to the family of this German” with whom she “cries”. And blurt out: “I no longer have a son. » This Monday, December 4 at the end of the afternoon, the parents’ custody was lifted, the anti-terrorism prosecutor told us. No charges were brought against them. Contacted, their lawyer, Me Safya Akorri, does not wish to speak for the moment.