France beheading: suspect had Isis links and terrorist motive, says prosecutor
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Version 0 of 1. Yassin Salhi, the French lorry driver who decapitated his boss before ramming a vehicle into a chemical plant near Lyon, had a terrorist motive and links to Islamic State extremists in Syria, a French state prosecutor has said. François Molins, Paris’s chief prosecutor, said the investigation pointed toward a “terrorist motive” to the attack, “even though it is justified by personal considerations”. Salhi, a 35-year-old married father of three, was arrested last Friday after he had rammed his van into the US-owned Air Products chemical factory near Lyon, in what the French president, François Hollande, said was a terrorist attack designed to blow up the building. Molins said Salhi had been overpowered by a firefighter as he was trying to prise open gas bottles shouting “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest] in an apparent bid to destroy the factory. Police then found the severed head of Hervé Cornara, 54 – the boss of Salhi’s transportation company – tied to the gates of the factory near two flags on which were written the Muslim profession of faith. Cornara’s decapitated body was found by the van with a knife and a fake pistol lying nearby. “Salhi decapitated his victim, he hung the head on a fence to get maximum publicity, as he told us during interrogation,” Molins said. The prosecutor said that Salhi claimed to have strangled his boss “with one hand” before stopping 500 metres from the factory to decapitate him using a knife with a 25cm (10in) blade. The head was attached to the fence with a chain and surrounded by two flags which Salhi said he had bought the night before the attack. “This corresponds very precisely to the orders of Daesh [Isis] which calls regularly for acts of terrorism on French soil and in particular to cut the throats of unbelievers,” Molins said. “The decapitation recalls the habitual modus operandi of this terrorist organisation.” Molins said the apparent attempt to blow up the factory resembled a suicide operation. Salhi refused to talk for his first 24 hours in custody, but Molins said he later gave a fragmented account, claiming he was suffering from amnesia and had no memory of the staging of the severed head. Molins said that shortly after Cornara’s murder, Salhi had sent photos of the crime to a contact in Syria, including a picture of the corpse draped in the flags with the head posed on the torso, and a picture of himself with the severed head. Salhi told investigators he did not remember taking or sending the photos. They had been sent to a French jihadi, known by his first name as Sebastien-Younès, 30, who was a childhood friend. Sebastien-Younès had gone to Syria in November last year and the two men had been in regular telephone contact. During raids on those in Sebastien-Younès’ close circle, police uncovered a telephone used to contact him. It revealed that he had said in a WhatsApp conversation on the day of the attack that he indeed knew Salhi and that he considered himself to be “one of the reasons” Salhi had carried out the crime. Sebastien-Younès also said in the messages that he had asked permission from Isis to publish the macabre photos. Molins said Salhi’s sister had told investigators that he had spent a year in Syria in 2009 with his wife and children, later telling contacts at a martial arts club in France that he had been studying at a Qur’anic school there. He had also travelled several times to Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Molins said that during questioning, Salhi claimed his motives were “purely personal” and his act was not terrorist, saying a fight with his employer as well as a dispute with his wife had sparked him to commit the crime. “According to him his motive was only personal and not terrorist. One does not exclude the other,” Molins said. The state prosecutor said that Salhi had been known for moving in the circles of radical islamists in his native area of Doubs in eastern France from 2003 and between 2006 and 2008 had been the subject of a police surveillance file. He said the fact that Salhi was close to fundamentalist islamists had been a source of conflict with his wife, who was not. A postmortem examination on Cornara has proved inconclusive, with experts unable to determine whether he was killed before his head was cut off. More tests are being carried out. The prosecutor has ordered an inquiry into murder with a connection to a terrorist enterprise and Salhi has been remanded in custody. |