On August 31, 2019, Sultan Niazi, wandering with a kitchen knife, randomly stabbed a dozen passers-by who were at the Laurent Bonnevay metro station in Villeurbanne, near Lyon. Two and a half years after the tragedy that claimed the life of a 19-year-old young man and seriously injured eight people, the suspect will never be tried.
This Tuesday, the investigating chamber recorded his criminal irresponsibility, considering that his discernment was abolished at the time of the facts, reveals Progress. In this, she followed the final indictment of the Lyon prosecutor’s office.
“Paranoid Schizophrenia”
Three psychiatric experts who examined the suspect concluded that he had severe personality disorders, speaking of “paranoid schizophrenia”. Of Afghan nationality, Sultan Niazi is still hospitalized in psychiatry. During the investigation, he admitted the facts by explaining that he heard voices in the headphones of his phone. On the day of the tragedy, witnesses heard him shout “allah akbar” but his delusional remarks, even tinged with religious vocabulary, were attributed to his pathology.
Passed through several European countries under different identities, where his age varies from 30 to 35, the suspect says he left Afghanistan as a teenager due to Taliban pressure on his family, and crossed Iran, Turkey and Greece . His trace was detected in 2009 in Bruges (Belgium), then in Calais and Great Britain in 2010, finally in Germany in 2015.
He would then have lived clandestinely in Paris, before arriving in the Lyon region in 2017, where he had applied for asylum. Witnesses reported signs of mental disorders during his accommodation but no follow-up was initiated.