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French officials are conducting an autopsy to determine whether a suspected Islamic extremist was drunk or high on drugs when he took a soldier hostage at Orly Airport in Paris and was shot dead by her fellow patrolmen.
Key points:
- Suspect was seen at a bar before the airport attack
- The 39-year-old had a long criminal record related to drugs and robberies
- Police found cocaine in his apartment
Ziyed Ben Belgacem stopped at a bar early on Saturday morning, around four hours before he first fired birdshot at traffic police.
Ninety minutes later, he attacked the military patrol at Orly, causing panic and the shutdown of the city's second-biggest airport.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the man, named as 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem, had shouted he was there to "die for Allah" when he tried to seize the gun from an air force member.
"With a pistol in his right hand and a bag over his shoulder, he grabbed [the soldier] with his left arm, made her move backward by three to four metres, positioning her as a shield, and pointed his revolver at her forehead," he said.
After throwing down a bag containing a can of petrol and putting an air pistol to the head of the soldier, he was shot three times by her colleagues.
The prosecutor's office said blood samples taken during Sunday's autopsy were to be screened for drugs and alcohol.
Mr Molins said a subsequent police search of Belgacem's apartment found cocaine.
The 39-year-old Frenchman had a long criminal record, with multiple jail terms for drugs and robbery offences.
Mr Molins said Belgacem was out on bail, banned from leaving France and obliged to report regularly to police, having been handed preliminary charges for robberies in 2016.
He was also flagged as having been radicalised during a spell in detention from 2011–2012.
His house was among scores searched in November 2015 in the immediate aftermath of suicide bomb-and-gun attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.
Suspect's father released from custody
Prosecutors said Belgacem's father had been released from police custody on Saturday night, but his brother and a cousin were still being questioned.
Mr Molins said Belgacem had called his father and brother early on Saturday morning, minutes after he fired birdshot at a police traffic patrol, injuring an officer in the face, to say that he had made a stupid mistake.
In an interview on Sunday with French radio station Europe 1, a man identified as the suspect's father said Belgacem drank alcohol and was not a practising Muslim.
"My son was never a terrorist. He never attended prayer. He drank. But under the effects of alcohol and cannabis, this is where one ends up," the man said.
Europe 1 did not give the father's name.
"He was extremely angry, even his mother couldn't understand him," the man told Europe 1.
"He told me, 'I ask for your forgiveness, I've screwed up with a gendarme'."
Saturday's attack forced both of the airport's terminals to shut down and evacuate, sent passengers and workers fleeing in panic and trapped hundreds of others aboard flights that had just landed.
It was the violent climax of what authorities described as a 90-minute spree of destructive criminality across Paris by the suspect.
The fearsome drama that caused no injuries aside from the lightly wounded traffic police officer further rattled France, which remains under a state of emergency after attacks in the past two years that have killed 235 people.
AP/Reuters
Topics: terrorism, air-transport, defence-forces, france
First posted