A person was arrested this Saturday by the police after having injured several passers-by with a knife at Lyon station, one of the main stations in the French capital. The French authorities rule out, in principle, terrorist motivation.
The French police have reported that the individual attacked several passers-by who were passing through the station at around 8 a.m. (7:00 GMT) with a knife and a hammer.
The perpetrator, who was immediately arrested thanks to the help of other passengers and the gendarmerie railway brigade, is a Malian citizen who had a residence permit in Italy, which allowed him to travel throughout the European Union.
According to the first elements of the investigation, he did not make any protest cry and no elements of terrorist radicalism have been found.
After his arrest, he claimed to suffer from psychiatric problems, while the agents found medications to cure this type of imbalance among his belongings.
The first elements of the investigation into the knife attack do not “suggest that it is a terrorist act,” the police declared, specifying that the suspect “obviously suffers from psychiatric illnesses.”
The attacker, a Malian national, who was subdued and detained after the attack, has been “regularly residing in Italy since 2016, with a valid permit issued in 2019”, according to the documents in his possession.
The man “spontaneously” declared to the police at the time of his arrest that he was suffering from “psychiatric disorders” and “illnesses,” police prefect Laurent Núñez reported during a press conference at Lyon station.
The aggressor attacked “three passers-by” who were at the station around 8 in the morning “with a knife and a hammer”, leaving “one of them seriously injured.” His condition has “stabilized” but “his vital prognosis remains compromised” at this time, Núñez stated, contrary to what police sources initially stated.
Two other people were slightly injured and a fourth was left in shock.
The investigations that the authorities are carrying out will confirm whether “the terrorist trail can be ruled out,” concluded the police prefect, asking for “caution” regarding the aggressor’s motive.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, an investigation into attempted murder has been opened. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office stated that he was under observation.
Due to the intervention of the police and emergency services, Hall 3 of the Lyon Station, the smallest of the three on this railway axis through which more than 100 million passengers pass each year, was closed for hours. only surpassed by the North Station, the largest in Europe.
Trains mainly leave from this section to the Paris beltway, essentially the southeastern towns.
Lyon Station is an important travel center that, in addition to the main cities in the southeast of France, connects with Italy, Switzerland and the eastern border of Spain.
France raised its level of anti-terrorist surveillance last October after the jihadist attack against a teacher in Arras, in the north of the country, which resulted in an exceptional deployment of law enforcement forces, including 7,000 additional soldiers.
On January 15, the authorities lowered the level of surveillance, but maintained extensive surveillance in the most sensitive places, such as transport stations, places of worship or schools.
An alert that is expected to remain in place until the start of the Olympic Games on July 26.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, then stated that there was a high jihadist atmosphere in the atmosphere linked to the international tension intensified by the conflict in the Middle East.
