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Man arrested over attack on French soldier Man arrested over attack on French soldier
(about 6 hours later)
A 22-year-old man has been arrested in connection with an attack at the weekend in which a French soldier was stabbed, the interior ministry has announced. French police have arrested a 21-year-old man following the stabbing of a soldier in a busy Paris shopping precinct on Saturday.
The man was picked up in Verriere, west of Paris, after a three-day search by anti-terrorist police. The suspect was picked up around dawn on Wednesday in a western suburb of Paris and has been placed in custody for 96 hours, the maximum allowed for suspected terrorist attacks.
One police source told AFP the suspect had been a follower of "conservative, even radical, Islam for the past three or four years", and had come across police radars before, although only for petty crimes. He is now being questioned about the attack on Private Cédric Cordier, who was approached from behind and stabbed in the neck with a knife or cutter as he patrolled the in the underground mall outside La Défense station.
Prosecutors are to give further details on the arrest later on Wednesday. French officials are investigating links with the killing of British soldier Lee Rigby who was hacked to death in Woolwich, south-east London, last Wednesday, just a few days before the attack on Cordier, but say they have no evidence the two incidents are connected.
The soldier, Cédric Cordiez, was slashed in the throat by an assailant who came from behind as he was on group patrol in the business district of La Défense, outside Paris, where train lines converge on a busy shopping mall. Cordier, 25, was released from hospital on Monday, and has rejoined his rifle unit where he has been given time off duty, but is said to be "traumatised".
Saturday's stabbing came just three days after the Woolwich attack in London, though French law enforcement authorities have been urging caution about linking the two attacks. The Frenchman arrested on Wednesday at La Verrière in the Yvelines department was known to investigators but not to the intelligence service, said the French interior minister, Manuel Valls.
The interior minister, Manuel Valls, said there was no immediate confirmation of any link between the French suspect and the London attack, telling the iTele network: "We have to learn more about his motivations, his record, his background." But he added that there were indications that the man was linked to radical Islam. "I cannot talk about radical Islam," the minister added. Later, talking on news channel iTélé, Valls confirmed reports that the suspect had "traditional, even radical, Islamic links for the past three or four years", but cautioned against drawing any hasty conclusions.
Three French paratroopers were killed last year by Mohammed Merah, described by police as a French-born radical Islamist, who then went on to attack a Jewish school and kill four more people before dying in a shootout with police. "We have a certain number of elements that suggest this, but the inquiry has only just begun and we have to respect it. The prosecutor and police think this man is sufficiently dangerous to put this inquiry under the authority of the anti-terrorist prosecutor."
"Members of the military know they have to be on guard," Valls said. Paris prosecutor François Molins told journalists the suspect "wanted to target a representative of the state". He added that the attacker had stabbed several times with "impressive determination".
In a press conference on Wednesday, Molins added that the suspect had converted to Islam at 18 and had no doubt acted out of "religious ideology". The prosecutor said the man was not known to the country's intelligence services, but had been stopped and asked for his identity papers after praying in the street in 2009, and was known to police for petty crimes and violence, for which he had been cautioned but never prosecuted.
Molins said video footage showed the suspected attacker had bought two knives in a hypermarket in the shopping centre before the attack and had prayed shortly before the stabbing.
When police arrested him outside a friend's flat at 6am on Wednesday, Molins said he "indicated to police he knew why they were there". For the moment, investigators are still qualifying the attack as "terrorist", he added.
Police said the man, described as "bearded, tall and athletic", was identified from CCTV footage around the shopping concourse and from DNA found on items found in a bag nearby, including a Laguiole knife and an opened bottle of orange juice.
French papers have reported sources close to the inquiry saying the man was seen praying before the attack. However, the same sources said the man, reported to hold strong religious convictions, was not known as a "jihadist".
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