On the morning of April 4, 2020, during confinement, Abdallah Osman Ahmed stabbed two men and injured five people in the city center of Romans-sur-Isère, in Drôme. Four years later, two anti-terrorism investigating judges ordered a trial for “assassinations and attempted terrorist assassinations” against this attacker, a Sudanese refugee suffering from psychiatric disorders.
According to witnesses to the attack, he had acted without uttering “the slightest word”, “with a blank stare”, and had “looked hypnotized” and “possessed”, remaining “very calm”, it is reported in the last second opinion, signed on June 20, 2023.
The psychological state of the attacker at the heart of the investigations
The psychological state of this Sudanese refugee, currently aged 37, was at the heart of the investigations carried out at the anti-terrorism unit of the Paris court. Two of the three psychiatric assessments carried out between 2020 and 2023 concluded that the attacker’s discernment had been impaired. With an alteration of discernment, the accused no longer risks life imprisonment, but 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
The second expert opinion, dated November 7, 2022, had on the contrary established the “abolition” of his discernment, because he “presented, for weeks before the events, a psychiatric picture associating delusional symptoms of persecution (auditory hallucinations), a massive anxiety, a depressive feeling (sadness, pessimism, suicidal thoughts, withdrawal at home, weight loss).”
“If the mental disorder qualified by the experts as an acute paranoid hallucinatory psychotic attack at the time of the events is not contested by any of the expert opinions, it has nevertheless not been proven that it was the only element at the origin of the triggering of the act”, note the two investigating judges in their indictment order before the special assize court, signed on Tuesday. “This disorder associated with the uprooting and isolation from which Mr. Osman Ahmed suffered, accentuated by the start of the first health confinement, was one of the triggers of the journey,” they add.
“The incredible violence of scenes of aggression”
The two magistrates underline “the great determination of the author”, “the incredible violence of the scenes of aggression”, “the modus operandi”, as well as “the + choice + of some of his victims” and “a form of rationality » in the attack.
According to them, “this action finds its justification in an allegiance and a claim linked to Islamic jihad, although no proven contact of the author with members of this organization has been found and that his act has not been claimed as such.”
No memory of what happened?
The day before the incident, the attacker “posted writings linked to the ideology of radical Islam and thus justified the act he was preparing to commit,” it is written in the order. Propaganda files and images linked to jihadist ideology were found on his mobile phone.
During the interrogations, the Sudanese indicated that he had no memory of what happened. He spoke of having acted in response to “voices which ordered him to deliver himself”. A law graduate and farmer, he left his country for economic reasons and obtained refugee status in France on June 29, 2017. His wife remained in Sudan.
He was not known to belong to a terrorist organization. And, note the investigating judges, Abdallah Osman Ahmed has “always lived according to the precepts of Islam without ever adopting an Islamist approach”. But “his way of life was profoundly disrupted by immigration and confinement reinforced his feeling of isolation in contrast to the environment in which he had grown up and evolved before his arrival in Europe”.
Uprooting, loneliness, the absence of spirituality are “elements (which) could have constituted the breeding ground on which the Islamic terrorist motive to which Abdallah Osman Ahmed adhered was attached,” underline the two anti-terrorism investigating judges. Abdallah Osman Ahmed’s lawyers did not immediately react.