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Rediff.com  » News » IS terrorist who killed French cops called to turn 'Euro 2016 into a graveyard'

IS terrorist who killed French cops called to turn 'Euro 2016 into a graveyard'

June 14, 2016 21:16 IST
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The who man who knifed to death a French police couple posted a Facebook video from the scene of the murders, calling for further strikes during the Euro 2016 championships, a terrorism expert was quoted as saying.

According to the Paris prosecutor, he also had a ‘hit list’ of VIPs, policemen and rappers.

Police also found three telephones, three knives ‘and in particular a bloodied knife lying on the table,’ Francois Molins told reporters.

The killer, 25-year-old Larossi Abballa, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group three weeks ago, Molins said.

Abballa attacked a 42-year-old police officer, stabbing him repeatedly outside his home on Monday, before going inside and slitting the throat of his 36-year-old partner, who also worked at a police station.

Meanwhile, David Thomson, a terrorism expert at Radio France Internationale, said Abballa had posted a video on Facebook on Monday evening, in which he announced that he had killed a policeman and his wife and called to turn Euro 2016 into a graveyard.

The video has since been removed.

In the 13-minute-long footage shot at the house of his victims, Abballa pointed at the couple’s three-year-old child, saying, “I don't know what to do with him.”

The assailant, who was killed in a police raid around three hours later, also posted pictures of the dead couple on the account, which was in the name of Mohamed Ali.

Swearing allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the 25-year-old attacker called on other Muslims to attack ‘police, journalists, public figures, prison guards and rappers,’ listing around a dozen well-known figures by name.

‘We will turn the Euro into a graveyard,’ he threatened, four days after the start of the football championships in a country on high alert after last November’s attack in Paris.

The IS-linked Amaq news agency later announced that an ‘Islamic State fighter’ had killed a policeman and his wife near Paris with a knife.

Molins said wiretap surveillance of Abballa had given no clue to the upcoming attack. He had been under surveillance since January as part of an investigation into a Syrian jihadi network.

Abballa was sentenced in September 2013 to two-and-a-half years in prison over his role in a jihadist group with links to Pakistan, but freed because of time already served awaiting trial.

IMAGE: Policemen guard a roadblock at the scene where a French police commander was stabbed to death in front of his home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville, France, on Tuesday. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters

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