Beheading suspect admits to killing
Print Edition
THE man suspected of decapitating his boss in an attack on a gas factory in France confessed to the grisly crime yesterday, when he was transferred to Paris for questioning by anti-terrorism police.
Yassin Salhi, 35, “has also given details about the circumstances” surrounding the killing, according to sources close to the investigation, without offering further details.
Salhi left the police headquarters in France’s southern city of Lyon in a van escorted by nine unmarked cars en route to Paris where he will be grilled by specialist officers.
The convoy stopped briefly at Salhi’s house to pick up his passport, where several masked officers bundled him into his apartment, covering his face with a white cloth and fitting him with a bulletproof vest.
His confession came after it emerged the married father-of-three sent a gruesome selfie photo of himself and the severed head to a WhatsApp number in Canada.
Investigators have warned however that it could be a relay number and the intended recipient could be anywhere in the world.
After several hours of silence, Salhi has begun to open up to investigators about the assault, which came six months after 17 were killed in Islamist attacks in Paris that began with the massacre at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
His wife and sister, who were both taken into custody on Friday, were released.
On Friday morning, Salhi rammed his van into the US-owned Air Products factory near France’s second city of Lyon in what President Francois Hollande said was a “terrorist” attack designed to blow up the whole building.
He was overpowered by a firefighter as he was trying to prise open a bottle of acetone in an apparent suicidal bid to destroy the factory.
Police then made the grisly discovery of the severed head of Salhi’s boss, 54-year-old Herve Cornara, tied to the gates of the factory near two flags on which were written the Muslim profession of faith.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French television yesterday that the world was engaged in a “war against terrorism.”
“We cannot lose this war because it’s fundamentally a war of civilization. It’s our society, our civilization that we are defending,” Valls told iTELE news channel.
France is facing “a major terrorist threat” which needs to be fought “over the long term,” he warned.
It’s not a question of whether there will be another attack, but “when” and “where,” stressed Valls.
It also emerged yesterday that Salhi and Cornara may have quarrelled just two days before the killing.
According to sources close to the investigation, one of the firm’s employees said Salhi had dropped a crate of expensive materials, was reprimanded by his boss and voices were raised.
Friday’s attack came on a day of bloodshed on three continents that saw 38 people mown down on a Tunisian beach and 26 killed in a suicide attack in a Kuwait mosque.
The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for those two attacks but no group has said it carried out the French operation.
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