Man knifes police couple to death in Paris, IS claims attack

Paris, June 14

Larossi Abballa, the man who knifed to death a police couple at their home near Paris had a “hit list” of VIPs, police and rappers, the Paris prosecutor said on Tuesday.

He also posted a Facebook video from the scene of the murders calling for further strikes during the Euro 2016 championships, a jihadist expert said.

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David Thomson, a terrorism expert at Radio France Internationale, said the video was posted using the Facebook Live application at 8.52 pm on Monday.

It has since been removed.

In 13 minutes of footage shot at the home of his victims, Larossi Abballa announced that he had killed a policeman and his wife, said Thomson, author of a book on young French radicals.

"I don't know what to do with him," Abballa says in the footage, indicating the couple's three-year-old child sitting behind him on a couch.

The assailant, who was killed in a police raid around three hours later, also posted pictures of the dead couple on the account, which was in the name of Mohamed Ali.

During the assault, he attacked the 42-year-old police officer, stabbing him repeatedly outside his home, before going inside and slitting the throat of his 36-year-old partner, who also worked at a police station.

At the start of the recording, the 25-year-old convicted radical swears allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

He then calls on other Muslims to attack "police, journalists, public figures, prison guards and rappers," listing around a dozen well-known figures by name.

"We will turn the Euro into a graveyard," he threatened, four days after the start of the football championships in a country on high alert after last November's jihadist carnage in Paris.

Abballa asked his 160 Facebook followers, particularly his IS contacts, "to issue a statement claiming the attack".

The IS-linked Amaq news agency later announced that an "Islamic State fighter" had killed a policeman and his wife near Paris with a knife.

Police also found three telephones, three knives “and in particular a bloodied knife lying on the table,” Francois Molins told a news conference.

The killer, 25-year-old Larossi Abballa, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group three weeks ago, Molins said.

Abballa was sentenced in September 2013 to two-and-a-half years in prison over his role in a jihadist group with links to Pakistan, but freed because of time already served awaiting trial. — AFP