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PARIS, June 10 (AP) – A French judge on Saturday charged a man with preliminary attempted murder in the stabbing of four young children and two adults in a park in the French Alps, in an attack that has spread across France and beyond. The region resonates.
District Attorney Line Bonnet-Mathis said the suspect was a 31-year-old Syrian refugee with permanent residency in Sweden, where he has a 3-year-old daughter.
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Witnesses told investigators that the suspect mentioned his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ during Thursday’s attack on a playground in the lakeside town of Annecy.
Victims from multiple countries are no longer in danger, prosecutors said. The children, aged between 22 months and 3 years, remain in hospital.
Police detained the suspect in a lakeside park in the town of Annecy after bystanders – notably a Catholic pilgrim who repeatedly waved his backpack at the attacker – tried to stop him.
The suspect, whose name has not been released, was brought before an investigating judge in Annecy on Saturday and charged with attempted murder and armed resistance, Bonnet-Mathis said. He was detained pending further investigation.
Prosecutors said the suspect refused to speak with investigators and was examined by a psychiatrist and other doctors who deemed him fit to face charges. She said the motive was unclear but did not appear to be terrorism-related.
Witnesses said they heard the attacker refer to his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ, who said he was wearing a cross and carrying two Christian images at the time of the attack, according to prosecutors.
He also had 480 euros in cash and a Swedish driver’s license, and had been sleeping in the common area of ​​the Annecy apartment building.
Regional judicial police chief Damien Delaby said he traveled to Italy and Switzerland before coming to France last October and French police were coordinating with colleagues in those countries to learn more about his trajectory .
The child victims, two 2-year-old French cousins, a boy and a girl, were on the playground with their grandmother when the perpetrators emerged; a British 3-year-old girl was visiting Annecy with her parents; and a 22-year-old girl, according to prosecutors One month old Dutch girl.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the victims, their families, first responders and witnesses on Friday. Macron said doctors were “very confident” about the condition of the two most seriously injured cousins.
The injured British girl “woke up, she was watching TV,” Macron added. An injured Dutch girl is also improving and a seriously injured adult is regaining consciousness, Macron said.
The seriously injured adult was treated in Annecy. Portugal’s foreign ministry said he was Portuguese and “now out of danger”. It said he was injured “trying to prevent the attacker from fleeing from the police”. A second injured adult was released from the hospital with a bandage on his left elbow.
Pilgrim Henri Henri, 24, who was on a nine-month walk and hitchhike tour of the French cathedral, said he was preparing to leave for another abbey when the horror unfolded before him.
The attackers slashed at him, but Henry held his ground, waving at the attackers with the heavy backpack he was carrying.
Henry’s father said his son “told me that this Syrian was incoherent, saying a lot of strange things in different languages, asking for help from his father, mother and all the gods.”
The image of the suspect has reignited criticism of France’s immigration policy from far-right and conservative politicians. But authorities pointed out that the suspect had entered France legally because he had permanent residency in Sweden. Sweden and France are both member states of the European Union and the European Borderless Travel Zone.
He applied for asylum in France last year but was rejected days before the attack on the grounds that he had already been granted asylum in Sweden in 2013, the French interior minister said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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