At the entrance to a police station in the French town of Rambouillet, a Tunisian stabbed a police officer who suffered severe injuries and died on the spot. Her colleagues shot and arrested the attacker, who later died at the hospital. The counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office is investigating the case.
An AFP source familiar with the investigation said the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great). The woman working at the reception desk of the police station when the attacker injured her on the neck. The 49-year-old woman died on the spot despite firefighters giving her first aid, leaving behind two children. According to Le Parisien, the man attacked her while she was returning from lunch.
In response to the attack, French President Emmanuel Macron said that France would not slow down in the fight against Islamist terrorism while his main rival in the 2022 presidential elections, Marine Le Pen, decried the fact that the government seems paralyzed to stop terrorist incidents that have plagued France for years.
Les mêmes horreurs se succèdent, la même infinie tristesse en pensant aux proches et aux collègues de cette policière assassinée, les mêmes profils coupables de cette barbarie, les mêmes motifs islamistes…
On n’en peut plus. MLP #Rambouillet
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 23, 2021
? "Comment un homme qui est resté clandestin durant 10 ans sur notre territoire a-t-il pu être régularisé ? Pourquoi les centaines de milliers de clandestins présents en France ne sont pas expulsés ?" #Rambouillet pic.twitter.com/OndsFZ2nY8
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 23, 2021
“The republic has lost one inconspicuous heroine today due to a barbaric and very cowardly act,” Castex said.
The media, referring to the police, identified the attacker as a 36-year-old Tunisian who resided legally in the country and had no criminal record.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the man surveyed the area before the attack. At the crime scene, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard stated that he took over the case mainly because of the way the attack was carried out, the victim’s profile, but also the “remarks” made by the perpetrator.
“We will not slow down in the fight against Islamist terrorism,” Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter.
“She was a policewoman. Stéphanie was killed at her police station in Rambouillet in the already affected department of Yvelines,” Macron added, referring to last year’s murder of teacher Samuel Paty and the murder of a pair of police officers in June 2016 in the same area.
Elle était policière. Stéphanie a été tuée dans son commissariat de Rambouillet, sur les terres déjà meurtries des Yvelines. La Nation est aux côtés de sa famille, de ses collègues et des forces de l’ordre. Du combat engagé contre le terrorisme islamiste, nous ne céderons rien.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 23, 2021
Islamists have carried out a range of attacks over the years, with Paty’s beheading death last year being committed by an 18-year-old Chechen whose family was provided asylum in France after their request for asylum was rejected in Poland. The Chechen was apparently motivated to kill Paty after Paty showed a caricature of Muhammad during a lesson on freedom of expression in France to his class.
Paty is not the only one to suffer a beheading death at the hands of Islamists either.
In 2015, Hervé Cornara was beheaded by Yassin Salhi, who hung Cornara’s head on a fence post alongside flags of Chahada, an Islamic creed.
Hervé Cornara’s brother, Didier Cornara, told Le Parisien last year that the tragic murder destroyed his family and that the government has forgotten about him and the murder. He blamed Macron’s government for failing to take action against radical Islam to prevent another tragedy.
Over 250 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in France since just 2015. Last year, György Bakondi, the Hungarian prime minister’s chief security officer, stated in a televised interview that the reason France suffers from terrorism and not Hungary is that Hungary has rejected mass immigration.
Title image: Police officers gather next to the Police station in Rambouillet, southwest of Paris, Friday, April 23, 2021. A French police officer was stabbed to death inside her police station Friday near the famed historic Rambouillet chateau, and her attacker was shot and killed by officers at the scene, authorities said. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
