The man who stabbed six people, including four children, in a park in Annecy, eastern France, He was charged this Saturday with attempted murder, the prosecutor announced, adding that the victims are out of danger.
The magistrates charged him with the crimes of rebellion with a weapon and, above all, with attempted murder, a crime for which he could be sentenced up to life imprisonment.
The motivations of the man, who was placed in preventive detention after the attack on Thursday that shocked the entire country, they remain unknown.
The Annecy prosecutor, Line Bonnet-Mathis, specified in a press conference that the man, identified as Abdalmasih H., “did not want to speak”, not even during the first 48 hours of his detention, nor before the two investigating judges.
The defendant underwent a psychiatric examination on Friday that determined that his condition is “compatible” with detention. But the prosecutor indicated that it is premature to rule on his diagnosis or rule out a psychiatric pathology.
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The police identified Abdalmasih H. as the person responsible for an attack on several people in the French park of Annency.
The man of Syrian nationality stabbed six children and two adults, in a fact investigated by the police. pic.twitter.com/yHYmcmjCE5
— Ronny De la Rosa V. (@Ronny_dv) June 8, 2023
From Syria, he is 31 years old and both his wife and his three-year-old daughter live in Sweden, where he obtained refugee status in 2013. In May 2022, he left Sweden and was in Italy and Switzerland before arriving in France, where he has been living without a fixed address since October of last year.
Upon arrival, He applied for refugee status in France, but the Administration responded with a refusal on the 4th precisely because it already had that status recognized in Sweden. A statute that allowed him to circulate through the Schengen area, although not to settle permanently in a country other than the one that had given him refugee status.
After his arrest, the attacker did not give any explanation and “obstructed his arrest”, throwing himself to the ground. “Insanity is too easy an excuse, it is important that it is known that he is being heard and that he is not treated simply as a delusional person,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Friday.
“There is certainly a motivation that investigators will try to understand,” he told BFMTV.
“Investigations are continuing,” in particular to “determine his personality, background and what he did since he arrived in France,” said a source close to the investigation.
Since news of the attack broke, opposition leaders in France have criticized “mass immigration”, some citing “radical Islam” and “terrorism”. Later it was reported that the attacker is a Christian and that the prosecution ruled out an act with “terrorist motivation.”
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The survivors
For now, the lives of the victims of this attack that occurred in a quiet town on the edge of a lake are no longer in danger.Bonnet-Mathis reported. Four children, between 22 and 36 months of age, and two adults were injured in the incident.
Although there are no longer fears for the lives of any of the six victims of the attack, both the four children (who are between three years and 22 months) and one of the adults remain hospitalized.
Two of the children (one born in February 2021 and one born in August 2020) are French. There is also a little British girl born in March 2020 who was in Annecy with her family on her vacation, as well as another Dutch woman who, after the attack, was rushed to an emergency hospital.
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As for the two adults, one has already been discharged and the second, who, in addition to being stabbed by the assailant, received an involuntary shot by the police, is still hospitalized but his condition allowed him to give a statement.
The attack, which took place in a park and in broad daylight, shocked the entire country, and in particular the city of Annecy. Hundreds of people turned out on Friday to lay white flowers, stuffed animals, candles or messages of support at a small makeshift memorial at the site of the attack, where children returned to play hours after the drama.
In Annecy the day concluded with a mass for the victims in the Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens cathedral. Among the participants was Henri, a young man who tried to neutralize the attacker. “I don’t like the term hero at all. I think he acts as any Frenchman could have done and should,” he declared before the mass.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP and EFE
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