A police officer was murdered in the lobby of the Rambouillet police station – Bertrand GUAY / AFP
- The victim, Stéphanie M., a police officer, was 49 years old and the mother of two children.
- The assailant, a 36-year-old Tunisian, was shot dead by a police officer fire. Witnesses would have heard him shout “Allahu Akabar”, according to a source close to the investigation.
- The national counterterrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, declared that the latter had carried out a location scouting, without specifying its content. The Pnat took up the investigation.
A few months after the assassination of Samuel Paty, beheaded in front of the high school in which he taught, the Yvelines department is again the ground of a terrorist attack: this Friday at the beginning of the afternoon, Stéphanie M., an official 49-year-old police officer, was stabbed to death in the airlock of the Rambouillet police station where she had worked for 28 years. His attacker, a 36-year-old Tunisian, died a few minutes later, shot dead by police who witnessed the tragedy. 20 minutes make the point.
What happened ?
If the investigation is only in its infancy, the scenario of this macabre afternoon seems little by little to take shape. Around 2:20 p.m., the victim, a 49-year-old administrative agent, rushed into the building’s secure airlock after having gone to put back his parking disc. The assailant, who would have spotted him from the parking lot, enters in turn. In a short speech, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, said that the latter had carried out a location identification, without specifying its content.
As soon as the exterior door is closed, and before the one leading to the hall of the police station opens, the man brandishes a knife and stabs his victim in the neck. Several witnesses say they heard him shout “Allahu Akbar” while committing his crime, said a source close to the investigation. One of the officials who assists behind the glass door to the drama, immediately opens fire on the assailant. Hit twice, according to a police source, he died shortly after. His victim, mother of two, did not survive either, despite the intervention of the firefighters.
Who is the attacker?
The discovery of his identity papers in his personal effects made it possible to quickly identify the assailant: a 36-year-old Tunisian, with a clean criminal record and unknown to the intelligence services, specifies a high-ranking security source. The man, who arrived in France in 2009 and in a regular situation, was not the subject of any particular follow-up. A search is underway at his home in Rambouillet.
What are his motives ?
At this stage of the investigations, impossible to know that they were precisely his motivations. If at the beginning of the afternoon an uncertainty hung over the terrorist nature of this attack, the national anti-terrorism prosecution finally took up the case after having carried out an assessment of the first elements. A decision justified by the “modalities of the attack” – a stabbing murder against a police officer, a scenario characteristic of terrorist attacks – but also by the “words made by the author” and the “elements of tracking, ”said Jean-François Ricard.
An investigation has been opened of the heads of assassination on a person holding public authority in connection with a terrorist enterprise and terrorist association of criminals. The investigations were entrusted to the central directorate of the judicial police and to the DGSI under the coordination of the anti-terrorism sub-directorate.