The perpetrator of the attack that left one person dead – a 23-year-old German-Philippino tourist – and two injured, on the evening of Saturday, December 2, in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, had already been tried on terrorism charges. Armand R.-M. was sentenced, on March 16, 2018, to five years in prison, one suspended, for "association with terrorist criminals" by the 16th chamber of the Paris correctional court.
The 26-year-old French-Iranian is not the first radicalized ex-convict to carry out an attack after his release from prison: Chérif Kouachi had also been convicted of terrorism before committing the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015, nine years after his release. However, as dozens of jihadists will have finished serving their sentences in the next few years, Armand R.-M.'s act inevitably raises the question of how terrorists are monitored after their release.
This latest knife attack also raises, perhaps first and foremost, the question of psychiatric monitoring of certain radicalized individuals. Armand R.-M. had been under psychiatric treatment since his release from prison in 2020 but stopped receiving it in March 2022. Placed in police custody on Saturday evening for terrorist "murder and attempted murder," he told police officers that he was "fed up with seeing Muslims die," particularly in Gaza, and that France was "complicit" with Israel.
A source close to the investigation told Le Monde: "It's a complex profile, hard to pin down, capable of spinning out of control at any moment, but difficult to catch early on in the absence of any criminal offense. However, if Armand R.-M. was psychologically fragile (he had heard voices during his detention), the question of his criminal irresponsibility is not being prioritized for the time being, said this source. The video in which he claims responsibility for his actions, which has been authenticated, shows that his speech is well-constructed and not delusional.
The legal record of this man with an "S" file (used by law enforcement to flag someone considered a threat to national security) was retraced by Le Monde. Starting from his March 2018 judgment, it paints a picture of an unstable individual, oscillating, in his own words, between phases of "radicalization" and "deradicalization." It would seem that his variations were enough to mislead the various players responsible for assessing his dangerousness. This is despite the established fact that he has been in contact with four seasoned terrorists over the years, three of whom have committed attacks in France.
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