How Paris knife and hammer terrorist hoodwinked the authorities
The man arrested over the murder of a German tourist near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, was convicted in 2018 for involvement in a terrorist criminal conspiracy, having previously been in contact with the killers of two French police officers and a French priest. Then, after he was released from prison, he communicated online with the man who shortly afterwards killed teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb. Rajabpour-Miyandoab, now aged 26, subsequently managed to convince the authorities that he was a reformed character. But some of those in charge of his rehabilitation have now told Mediapart that they always harboured doubts about whether he had left the world of radicalism behind. Matthieu Suc reports.
ItIt was just after 9pm on Saturday when, on the quai de Grenelle near the Eiffel Tower in central Paris, an individual fatally stabbed a German tourist and threatened the victim's partner before a taxi driver intervened.
“Allahu Akbar!” cried the attacker before crossing Bir-Hakeim bridge pursued by police officers.
He had time to brandish a hammer and wound a passer-by in the eye with it. A third victim was left in serious “shock” after the attack, according to interior minister Gérald Darmanin. The minister said that before police officers neutralised him with an electrical stun gun, the killer told them that he could not bear the fact that “so many Muslims are dying in Afghanistan and Palestine”.
France's anti-terrorist prosecution unit the PNAT announced on Saturday evening that they have opened an investigation for “murder and attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise” and a “terrorist criminal conspiracy”.
The fatal attack that took place at Arras in northern France in mid-October and which claimed the life of a teacher was the first for five years - since the attack at the Christmas market in Strasbourg - to have been carried out by a man known to French intelligence services. The knife and hammer attack near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday evening now becomes the second.
For the 26-year-old suspected of killing the German tourist was already known to French counter-terrorism authorities, having been convicted for a previous planned attack and then serving his sentence.
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab had been arrested by France's domestic intelligence agency the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI) on July 29th 2016. The day before his name had cropped up during an investigation into a couple who had gone to join Islamic State with their three children. The husband, jihadist Maximilien Thibaut, had encouraged the young man – then aged 19 – to carry out a violent attack on French soil.
The intelligence services already suspected Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab of plotting a knife attack in La Défense business district of Paris. Meanwhile, an examination of his online connections revealed that he had been in contact with Larossi Abballa, the murderer of two police officers at Magnanville, west of Paris, and with Adel Kermiche, one of the killers of Father Jacques Hamel at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy, before these attacks took place in 2016.
In a report in the autumn of 2020 the DGSI wrote that Rajabpour-Miyandoab's profile demonstrated the “attraction of jihadist ideology for young people at a loose end, their fascination for violence, and Islamic State's capacity to influence through its propaganda and messages on social media, particularly Telegram”.
On March 16th 2018, two years after his arrest, a criminal court in Paris sentenced him to five years imprisonment, one suspended, and placed him on probation for involvement in a criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing a terrorist act.
Up and down religious life
Though potentially eligible for release in November 2019, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab was only allowed out on March 25th the following year and placed both under judicial supervision and under the system known as MICAS, an administrative and surveillance measure that aims to provide advance warning about any further terrorist acts.
His mother, who has looked after him at the family home at Puteaux in the western suburbs of Paris since he left prison, made a statement in relation to his involvement in the Samuel Paty murder case in which she said her son had reintegrated into society. “He's very involved with his studies. He does sport and exercises. Some reading on prehistory, on the first women in history. He also watches a bit of TV. He listens to Persian music, Iranian folk music, and a bit of rap. Authorised and decent music,” she stated. The mother, an atheist who fled cleric-run Iran with her husband, said her son had “matured since his imprisonment, he's more loving than before.” She insisted: “He feels 100% French, he's come out of it with a love of France. He acknowledges the true values of his country.”
The young man's intercultural and religion mediator at PAIRS-Paris – a programme tackling radicalisation run by the non-for-profit group SOS Solidarité - stated that Rajabpour-Miyandoab had abandoned his radicalised stance. “He listens to our arguments,” the point of contact explained in October 2020. “He's had an up and down religious life … He's been more stable for the past month and ascribes to a form of agnosticism and says he believes in a Creator without knowing which religion to follow.” While this intercultural and religion mediator noted that Armand followed “all cases with links to terrorism”, he took the view that the recently-freed young man was “more receptive than others who tend to hold things back”.
This kind of observation is also found more generally within the intelligence services. A senior official recently indicated that the vast majority of those who have left prison after serving sentences linked to jihadist terrorism had a “mindset of rehabilitation, a desire to turn the page”.
However, as news magazine L'Obs has revealed, this did not stop Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab being questioned in custody six months after his release as part of the criminal investigation into the murder of teacher Samuel Paty.
I now know how recruitment takes place and I won't allow myself to be influenced any more, and I'm well looked after by psychologists, instructors, mediators...
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab
On October 19th 2020 Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab walked into the police station in the La Défense business district of Paris accompanied by his intercultural and religion mediator. He was handing himself in to the police for having been in contact via Twitter (now X) fifteen days earlier with Abdoullakh Anzorov, the man who, in the intervening period, had decapitated Samuel Paty.
DGSI agents quickly arrived at the police station where Rajabpour-Miyandoab was waiting for them on a bench in the waiting room. They took him into custody and questioned him.
“Why have you come to the police station this morning?” they asked him.
“This guy, this terrorist who carried out the act on Friday [editor's note, October 16th 2020], I came across his Twitter account two weeks ago,” replied the young Franco-Iranian. “By surfing for the accounts of moderate Islamists, gradually, by following the comments, I came across this account Tchetchene270.” Having discovered a nasheed – a religious song which in this case had warlike references – he had re-tweeted it with the following comment: “This Chechen is clear in his ideology.”
“I didn't report this to Twitter or Pharos [editor's note, the system to flag illegal online material], because it wasn't enough for the law,” he said in custody, justifying his decision not to report it. “The aim of my comments was to warn others that this account was that of a radicalised individual.”
That did not stop him entering into a discussion with Anzorov though. “The person got back in touch me with via a private message,” said Rajabpour-Miyandoab. “He said that he repudiated Islamic State, that it was just a confused sect. I replied that I had recognised the nasheed, that his video left no room for doubt and that I had seen his old Tweets and that he was a purist.”
The analysis of Rajabpour-Miyandoab's Twitter account confirmed his presence on social media and also his discussions with Anzorov. He was released from custody in under 24 hours. “He told me 'I'm on the side of our police, our justice '….He really is innocent in this affair,” his mother said later.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab himself told the DGSI agents: “Given my record it might seem suspicious that just six months after my imprisonment I report radical Islamists when I have shared those beliefs in the past. During solitary in prison I got to read books which opened my mind and I doubted God and reflected on what I was being told to do or not do … I now know how recruitment takes place and I won't allow myself to be influenced any more, and I'm well looked after by psychologists, instructors, mediators...” He then added: “I'm really angry with Islamists!”
Two years on, this protestation of innocence seems strange when he is being held in custody on suspicion of having just killed a man and wounding two others to the cry of “Allahu Akbar”.
In the immediate aftermath of Saturday's attack interior minister Gérald Darmanin insisted that the alleged terrorist was “under psychiatric treatment” and undergoing treatment for “neurological” issues. It is true that he has been prone to anxiety attacks since he was imprisoned and one magistrate contacted by Mediapart recalls a “troubled” suspect when he came across him during the young man's first encounter with the anti-terrorism section of the judicial system. Once again this is nothing unusual. Out of the 5,218 active files concerning alerts to prevent radicalisation of a terrorist nature (files known as FSPRT), some 20% of the people concerned reportedly have psychological issues.
But on Sunday Mediapart spoke with several current or former members of the PAIRS-Paris anti-radicalisation programme who say they never believed there were serous psychological issues in this case. “He's not mad,” insisted one of them, referring to Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab. “He was absolutely not going through a breakdown.” These specialists criticised the way the programme works, with no scientific data being compiled as part of its operation.
“We didn't believe that Rajabpour had been de-radicalised,” said the PAIRS-Paris member quoted above. “He was certainly very polite but very shut off, silent. He didn't look at women, would not shake their hand, knew the Koran by heart and would relentlessly hold forth on the hadiths [the collected accounts of the sayings, actions and habits of the Prophet Muhammad].” A second member said: “He didn't seem to me to have broken with his jihadist commitment. He didn't inspire us with a sense of security when one was with him ...”
Some elements of his judicial case also raise doubt as to Rajabpour-Miyandoab's sincerity. In the case which earned him a four-year jail term he had already told the investigating judge that he was no longer “Muslim” but had also declared: “I acknowledge that the Nice attack [editor's note, the attack in 2016 which left 86 people dead] did not displease me and I consider what happened normal.”
During the investigation into the murder of Samuel Paty, an examination of Rajabpour-Miyandoab's computer revealed the use of TOR software which enables people to surf the web anonymously, plus the presence of 17 nasheeds recorded in July 2020, including 'Sharia of our Lord' and 'We came as Soldiers of God'.
“In view of your record, why do you continue to have these contacts with radical Islamists?” the DGSI asked him.
“They're not contacts so I can sympathise with them, but in fact denounce them,” he replied.
As nothing is straightforward with him, the DGSI agents also found signs of alerts that he had made to the Pharos system about several Twitter accounts. One psychological expert who met him during the first terrorist case said Rajabpour-Miyandoab's “lack of empathy which is integral to his personality disorder” might explain his passion for extremist Islamist theories and stressed that the “probability of his dangerousness remained high”.
According to Mediapart's information, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab was informed – at a date we have been unable to determine – of the end of his monitoring by the PAIRS system, with the team taking the view that he presented no risk of re-offending, and that he was even considered a model of de-radicalisation. Questioned about the end of his monitoring, his former point of contact, the intercultural and religion mediator who had gone with him to La Défense police station, told Mediapart that he did “not want to make any statement”.
