Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin called for authorities to be allowed to order treatment for radicalized individuals being monitored for psychiatric disorders, after the terrorist attack that left one person dead in Paris on Saturday evening. The minister was quick to head to TF1's evening news on Sunday to make the announcement, at the end of a meeting at the prime minister's office held at President Emmanuel Macron's request.
The attacker "adheres to radical Islam and is psychiatrically ill. He had stopped treatment at the request of certain doctors," Darmanin stated. "What undoubtedly needs to be changed – as we [discussed at the meeting with] the prime minister – is that the public authorities, the prefects and the police should be able to request and demand a care injunction, which is not the case today," he continued.
A few hours earlier, Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau had said of the assailant on France 3 television that "as is often the case in these cases, an ideology, an impressionable personality and, unfortunately, psychiatry are intertwined." He added: "Even if the links between [the] psychiatrists and the authorities who monitor these radicalized people have been greatly strengthened in recent years, this does not allow us to know the day and time [at which he would act.]"
"There was seemingly a psychiatric mess-up," said Darmanin on BFM-TV on Monday morning, explaining that the monitoring of such an individual was the responsibility not only of the police, who he said "did their job," but also of judges and doctors.
The government aims to prevent the right-wing and far-right opposition from developing their narrative too easily after the latest attack, which comes one month and a half after the death of schoolteacher Dominique Bernard, killed in Arras by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a young Islamist of Caucasian origin who was on the radar of intelligence services.
As early as Sunday morning, from Florence, Italy, where he was taking part in a rally with other European far-right leaders, the president of the Rassemblement National (RN), Jordan Bardella, blamed the government: "What I'd like is [for it] to realize that the policies it is pursuing and its weakness in protecting the French people are leading to these tragedies and causing these deaths," the 28-year-old MEP blasted on BFM-TV. "I have no taboos about protecting the French," retorted Darmanin on TF1.
Both the RN and the right have underlined the profile of the assailant, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a radical Islamist who was known to domestic intelligence services and previously sentenced to five years' imprisonment for planning a violent action near Paris, in 2016. "Once again, this Islamist was known! Islamist terrorism continues to kill in France, let's not be naive any longer!" posted Eric Ciotti, the president of the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party, on X.
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