Terror probe opened after two stabbed in Paris and two arrested
French are investigating a double stabbing outside the former offices of a satirical newspaper where a dozen people were killed in 2015, and two suspects have been arrested in Friday’s violence, authorities said.
France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor said authorities suspect a terrorist motive because of the place and timing of the stabbings: in front of the building where Charlie Hebdo was based until the Islamic extremist attack on its cartoonists and at a time when suspects in the 2015 attack are on trial across town.
Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said that the chief suspect in Friday’s stabbings was arrested, along with another person.
Ricard said the assailant did not know the people who were stabbed, a woman and a man working at a documentary production company who had stepped outside for a smoke break.
The suspects’ identities have not been released, and it is unclear exactly what prompted the attack. An investigation was opened into “attempted murder in relation with a terrorist enterprise,” according to an official at the terrorism prosecutor’s office.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex said the lives of the two wounded workers were not in danger.