Strasbourg shooter pledged allegiance to Islamic State, French official says

PARIS, France — The alleged gunman who shot and killed five people in a Christmas market attack this month in Strasbourg had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, a judicial official said Saturday.

The official, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said investigators have found a video stored on a USB key in which Cherif Chekatt had claimed allegiance to the group. The video was at Chekatt’s home.

Chekatt, 29, died in a shootout with police two days after his December 11 attack at Strasbourg’s popular Christmas market.

Shortly after his death, the Islamic State group’s Amaq news agency claimed he was a “soldier” of the group. French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner had rejected the claim as “totally opportunistic.”

Last week Abdelkrim Chekatt, Cherif’s father, said in an interview his son subscribed to the beliefs of Islamic State.

“He’d say, for example, that Daesh, fights for the just cause and all that,” Chekatt said, using the common term in France and elsewhere for the Islamic State group.

The French-Algerian said he’d tried in the past to dissuade his son from backing the Islamic State, saying, “You don’t see the atrocities they commit.” The son would reply that “it’s not them,” the father said.

The young Chekatt had been on a French intelligence watch list for radicalism and was convicted 27 times for criminal offenses — the first time at age 13 — mainly in France but also in Germany and Switzerland. Investigators are trying to determine whether he had accomplices or logistical support.