Headless body daubed with Arabic writing found after attack in France
Print Edition
A DECAPITATED body daubed with Arabic writing was found at a US-owned factory in southeast France yesterday after an assailant rammed a delivery van into gas containers at the site, triggering an explosion.
A source close to the investigation said the victim was the boss of the suspect, a delivery man. The two had gone to the company to make a delivery but the assailant killed and beheaded his 50-year-old manager before entering the secured site in the vehicle.
The attacker was injured in the blast and arrested at the scene. His wife was later taken into custody and authorities were questioning at least one other suspected accomplice.
French President Francois Hollande described it as a terrorist attack and said all measures would be taken to stop any future strikes on a country still reeling from Islamist assaults in January.
Referring to the separate attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait, Hollande called for nations to work together to combat security threats.
“There is no other link other than to say that terrorism is our common enemy,” he told reporters in Paris.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve named the suspect as Yassin Sahli. He said Sahli did not have a criminal record but had been under surveillance from 2006 to 2008 on suspicion of having become radicalized by Islamist associates.
The attack happened at an industrial zone near the town of Saint-Quentin Fallavier to the south of the city of Lyon.
It is one of Europe’s major hubs, with 5,000 trucks passing through it every day.
Sources close to the investigation said Sahli was a 35-year-old professional driver who lived in the Lyon suburbs.
Europe 1 radio interviewed a woman that they identified as his wife.
“In the morning he left for work and didn’t come home between noon and 2, I was waiting for him,” she said, adding that she and her family of three children lived normal lives as Muslims. “My heart is about to give out,” she said.
French BFMTV television filming outside Sahli’s apartment showed pictures of police leading out a woman, her head covered by a blanket, into a waiting car. It said forensic police were carrying out searches of the ground-floor apartment.
The attack, in which two other people were wounded, underlined again the difficulty for authorities across Europe and elsewhere of protecting so-called “soft” targets against strikes by assailants operating by themselves or in small undercover cells.
Police sources earlier said the decapitated body was discovered along with a flag bearing Islamist inscriptions.
Local newspaper Le Dauphine said the head, also covered in Arabic writing, was found hanging from a fence.
France, which has deployed aircraft to the international coalition fighting Islamic State insurgents in Iraq, has long been named on Islamist sites as a primary target for attacks.
In January, gunmen killed 17 people in the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and a Jewish food store.
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