French police worker’s killer watched jihadist videos just before attack – prosecutor ~ Updated

From Reuters via  KFGO

PARIS (Reuters) -The Tunisian national who killed a police administrative worker last Friday near Paris had watched religious videos glorifying acts of jihad just before carrying out his attack, said France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard.

Ricard told a news conference on Sunday that the official investigation had shown that the assailant, identified as “Jamel G”, looked at the videos on his phone just before his knife attack on the police worker, a mother-of-two called Stephanie.

“The attacker, just before carrying out his act, had looked at religious chants and videos glorifying jihad and martyrdom,” said Ricard, who added that the assailant had also shouted out “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is Greatest”, during the attack.

Ricard said France was working with Tunisian authorities in its probe into the Rambouillet attack. The Tunisian Embassy in Paris condemned the attack, in a statement issued this weekend.

As posted earlier his father and other associates have been taken in for questioning. 

Updated from the French edition of The Local. 

A fifth person has been detained for questioning over the grisly killing of a police employee outside Paris by a Tunisian man who embraced Islamist extremism in recent months, France’s chief anti-terror prosecutor said Sunday.

Based on an analysis of the killer’s cellphone as well as social media postings, “his radicalisation appears little in doubt,” Jean-Francois Ricard said at a press conference. The 36-year-old attacker (was) identified as Jamel Gorchene . . .  grabbed the victim from behind and stabbed her in the stomach and throat while yelling Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest), Ricard said. An officer in the building shot Gorchene after he refused an order to drop the knife, which had a 22-centimetre (nine inch) blade. Investigators discovered that he watched an Islamist jihad propaganda video on his phone shortly before the attack, and a Koran was found on his scooter afterwards.

Video surveillance cameras appear to show that Gorchene visited a temporary prayer hall in Rambouillet a few hours before arriving at the station, he added, though the images do not confirm if he entered the building.

Gorchene’s father was still being held for questioning Sunday, as was a couple who housed Gorchene after he arrived illegally in France in 2009, and a cousin. “His father revealed that his son had adopted a rigorous practice of Islam,” Ricard said