France knife attack sparks security questions

NICE, France (AFP) — French investigators were Wednesday interrogating a knife-wielding man who attacked three soldiers outside a Jewish center in Nice, as questions resurfaced over security measures a month after the Paris attacks.

The attacker, identified as 30-year-old Moussa Coulibaly from the poor western suburbs of Paris, was already known to police who questioned him just days before the attack, when he was expelled from Turkey last week.

Police arrested him immediately after he knifed the soldiers in broad daylight while they were patrolling outside the Jewish center — part of reinforced security measures introduced after last month’s jihadist attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead.

Two of the troops received knife wounds and a third managed to tackle the assailant to the ground.

“This attempted murder targeted soldiers because they were soldiers,” Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said during a visit to the victims’ barracks.

Anti-terrorist police were focusing their investigation on whether Coulibaly had known the soldiers were protecting a Jewish center, tucked away in a courtyard in the French Riviera city, and what his motives were.

They were also questioning his mother, sister and brother who were taken in after police searched his home in the poor suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie.

Since returning from France after his expulsion from Turkey on January 29, Coulibaly was staying at a hotel near Nice station, where investigators found a handwritten document on religion as well as Turkish currency.

Well-known to police

The knifeman has not been linked to Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman and four Jewish shoppers in a kosher supermarket during the Paris attacks last month before being shot dead by police.

The surname is extremely common in west Africa.

The knifeman Coulibaly had already been fined and given suspended jail sentences in France for offences including robbery and drug use.

He was picked up and questioned in mid-December after “aggressively” trying to spread his beliefs in a gym in Mantes-la-Jolie, a source said.

French intelligence services were then alerted to the fact that he was trying to enter Turkey — a key entry point for jihadists seeking to go to fight in Syria — and asked the country to expel him.

However, he was released as there was not enough evidence to press charges.

“We can’t consider it a failure every time that security forces mobilise over individuals likely to radicalise … but legal action is not taken due to lack of proof,” said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said

Coulibaly again fell foul of the law shortly before the attack, when he was fined for not having a ticket on a tram, and a Chad-born Canadian seen with him was taken into custody, although no formal link has been made between the two men.

“We don’t know what was going on in his head … he is normal,” a man who introduced himself as Coulibaly’s brother told journalists during the police search of his home Tuesday night.

Massive security measures

The attack came after France beefed up security to unprecedented levels around the country — deploying some 15,000 police and troops to protect sensitive sites in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned of the task facing security forces who have to monitor some 3,000 people with links to jihadists or “terrorist networks” in Syria and Iraq.

The three men who carried out the coordinated January 7-9 attacks in Paris, had also been known to police and Valls admitted there had been security “failings.”

France is battling to curb the flow of jihadists heading to fight alongside the Islamic State group, fearing they will carry out attacks on their return.

The country — part of a US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against IS — was Tuesday the target of fresh threats from the jihadist group.

A video widely shared online showed a masked jihadist urging the French to join their fight, and urged supporters to attack police and military targets in France.

President Francois Hollande will hold a press conference on Thursday during which he is expected to address the security concerns as well as efforts to strengthen French society against radicalization.