After trying to set fire to the Rouen synagogue this Friday, May 17, a man with a knife was shot dead by the police. The man was not known to the police, but was listed as a wanted person.
He has been identified, but checks are underway. The individual who attempted to burn down the synagogue and was shot dead by a police officer is believed to be a 29-year-old man of Algerian origin according to statements by the Rouen public prosecutor and the Minister of the Interior. . Gérald Darmanin clarified that the deceased suspect was “neither known to the police nor to the justice services” and that he was “not on S file”.
The individual had made a request for a “residence permit for sick foreigners” from the Rouen prefecture in 2022, but the request was rejected after consulting a doctor, added the Minister of the Interior during his travel on site. The suspect had been the subject of an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) for a year, but the latter was not executed, because the individual had initiated an appeal before the administrative courts, reports AFP . The appeal was dismissed in January 2024 and the man had since been “registered in the wanted persons file”.
The surveillance cameras of the city and the synagogue, located in the center, allowed the police to identify the facts. In the images which show part of the roof of the building, we can see the suspect “brandishing an iron bar in one hand, and a knife in the other”, said the public prosecutor of Rouen, Frédéric Teillet, during a press point this Friday noon. Arrested by the police, the individual “insults the police” then “throws the iron bar towards the police, jumps from the roof and runs towards a police officer, threatening him with a knife”, still according to the magistrate.
Earlier in the morning, the mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol told a similar story about the unfolding events at the microphone of France Bleu Normandie. He added, however, that the man had been seen “throwing an incendiary element, what could be called a Molotov cocktail” towards the synagogue.
Faced with the threat, one of the police officers recoiled several meters and “pointed his weapon at the attacker” while issuing several warnings according to the magistrate. The warnings did not deter the suspect, so the police officer fired “five times, hitting the man four times”. The man died at the scene from his injuries, despite the treatment provided by firefighters. The police officer who fired the shots, a 25-year-old officer according to Gérald Darmanin, was placed in police custody, as required by procedure. But according to the first images seen by the magistrate the official “used his weapon within permitted conditions”, and his police custody “will be lifted at the end of his hearing”. The police officer was also praised by the minister for “his courage and his professionalism”: “He used his administrative weapon, I mean he was right to do so
The attack is judged “deeply anti-Semitic” by the mayor of Rouen and is at the origin of the opening of two investigations for “arson” targeting a place of worship and for “intentional violence against persons entrusted with public authority to the general directorate of the national police. The investigations must shed light on the motivations of the suspect.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has not yet taken up the investigations. Nevertheless, he told Franceinfo that he was “assessing” the situation. To qualify acts of terrorism, the PNAT analyzes several criteria, including the profile of the author, his motivations, his ideological impregnation, his possible psychological fragilities and, finally, the existence or not of a claim aimed at associating his passage to an ideological or terrorist group, explains Le Monde. Information still unknown to the police services at the moment.