The facts still remain unclear, even in the mind of the author of the Annecy knife attack which occurred last June. Abdalmasih H. remained silent after his arrest and was more forthcoming, but “his motive remains unclear, including for him”, according to Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis.
He remains detained in a psychiatric unit at Vinatier hospital in Bron, near Lyon, and “a psychological assessment is underway,” she said. If experts consider that he is fit to stand trial, the magistrate plans to organize his trial in 2025.
Return to the attacker’s profile
He was indicted for “attempted assassination”, a count punishable by life imprisonment, and for “rebellion with a weapon” due to the conditions of his arrest. On the morning of June 8, armed with a knife, he attacked children on a playground in the historic center of Annecy. He injured four of them, aged 22 to 36 months, including a British woman and a Dutch woman, and two people in their seventies, before being arrested.
Witnesses heard this Eastern Christian “evoking his wife and daughter and pronouncing the name of Jesus Christ” during the attack, the prosecutor then reported, while ruling out “terrorist motivation” at this stage. After fleeing his country at war via Turkey, Abdalmasih H. obtained refugee status in Sweden at the end of 2013 but then failed to obtain Swedish nationality.
He left his host country in March 2022 after separating from his Swedish wife of Syrian origin and refugee, leaving her with custody of their three-year-old daughter. He passed through Italy and Switzerland before arriving in October 2022 in Annecy, where he lived without a fixed address until the tragedy.