On his LinkedIn profile, Mohammed M., the man arrested for the attack that killed a teacher at Arras's Lycée Gambetta-Carnot and wounded two other school staff on Friday, October 13, has short hair and is wearing round glasses. He looks like a diligent student, studying for a diploma in internal combustion engines. He is also a keen boxer. His sparse Facebook profile mentions a wedding in 2021.

Beyond scattered traces of his digital life, the young man and his family are above all very well known to the services of the French state. His brother was arrested and convicted in connection with a thwarted attack plan. A report on the family was added to recently by active surveillance on the ground. Mohammed M.'s means of communication were bugged. His movements were closely monitored by anti-terrorism police officers, to such an extent that he was stopped the day before the attack, without having done anything that would have enabled his arrest.

So how did a radicalized young man who was so closely monitored manage to carry out the attack? The investigation led by the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office is just starting to find out when was the turning point for him. Mohammed M. was born in Ingushetia in 2003, a Russian province next to Chechnya, and arrived in France in 2008 with his brothers and parents. The Salafist family first settled in Brittany, in the village of La-Guerche-de-Bretagne, south of Rennes. The children went to school, and they applied for asylum. However, the local prefecture refused to grant the father, Yacoub M., political refugee status.

According to news articles and press releases at the time, on February 18, 2014, border police officers turned up at the hostel where they were staying, questioned them and took them to the Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport to be sent back to Russia. However, this attempted deportation generated an outcry from local organizations defending undocumented migrants. Activists even briefly occupied the Rennes school inspectorate. In extremis, while on the tarmac waiting to take off, the family was taken off the return flight and released from detention. The father fled to Belgium, where he was arrested and put on a plane to Russia in 2018.

The mother and five children moved to Arras, where the children continued their education at the Lycée Gambetta and where they took part in boxing competitions. The eldest brother, Movsar, appeared on the authorities' radar in December 2016: His school reported him for remarks made in class about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. According to journalists at Le Parisien, he was quoted as saying, "The attack had taken place because they [the journalists] had insulted Muslims. They insulted Islam by making pictures of the prophet."

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