(…) The attacker, who was born in 1997 and had just been released from prison in Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne) at the end of June, where he was held at the Unit for Combating Radicalisation (QPR), comes from La Ferté-Bernard.
There, between 2am and 3am, he had a taxi driver drive him to the Saint-Laurent neighbourhood, where his mother is said to live, injured the taxi driver and then stole his vehicle to flee.
In the early morning of Wednesday, the taxi, a white BMW according to our information, was found in La Ferté-Bernard with, among other things, a machete-like weapon.
During the course of the day, officers from the French GIGN police are said to have entered the settlement and RAID forces were also mobilised to search for the fugitive, a radicalised young man who was prepared to clash with the security forces. Actu.fr
(…) The violent attack on a taxi driver in La Ferté-Bernard (Sarthe) on Tuesday night, revealed by our colleagues in the weekly newspaper L’Action-L’Echo, is the subject of an investigation entrusted to the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT). When asked by France Bleu Maine, the PNAT stated that the suspected attacker was known to the specialised services because of his radicalisation.
According to initial information from the PNAT, the passenger threatened the taxi driver in Le Mans with a handgun ‘by making statements to him that were favourable to Hamas and “his Muslim brothers”’. He forced him using violence to drive him to La Ferté-Bernard, where he forced the taxi driver to get out of the car before tying his hands and feet and assaulting him ‘with a stabbing weapon in the neck area’.
The PNAT explains that the victim managed to escape and find shelter with a local resident, where he was later treated by the emergency services. France Bleu