Germany has opened an investigation into the fatal stabbing this weekend of a German-Filipino tourist in Paris, prosecutors told Agence France-Presse on Monday, December 4. A spokeswoman for the federal prosecution service confirmed a report in Der Spiegel magazine of a probe into the attack, in which the 23-year-old tourist was killed by a man known to authorities as a radicalized Islamist with mental health problems.
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a French national of Iranian origin born in 1997, killed the German-Filipino man with two blows from a hammer and four stabs from a knife. Two other people were wounded.
The German investigation into the attack, which occurred near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday evening, will run alongside a French probe being handled by anti-terror prosecutors. French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told BFM TV there was "clearly a failure" in the psychiatric care of the attacker, who was suffering from an "acute mental illness."
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he was "devastated" by the attack, saying: "Our thoughts are with the wounded, their families and friends." His Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had earlier said "the threat of Islamist terrorism is acute and serious", saying "the war in Gaza" had "worsened the threat".