Seven arrested over Paris knife attack outside former Charlie Hebdo offices
The suspected knifeman has reportedly told police he was deliberately targeting the magazine.
The suspect behind a knife attack close to the offices of Charlie Hebdo has reportedly told police he was deliberately targeting the magazine.
A man and woman were wounded after being hacked at with a meat cleaver in Paris on Friday.
They had been working at a documentary production company in the weekly satirical’s old building and had stepped outside for a cigarette break. Officials have said their wounds are not life-threatening.
It is the same block where Islamist militants gunned down employees of Charlie Hebdo in 2015 because of the republication of cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammad and coincided with the start of the trial of 14 alleged accomplices in the attack which killed 12 people.
The suspect behind the latest attack had his custody extended on Saturday morning, a judicial source said. According to French law, he faces a formal investigation at the end of the process.
By midday Saturday, a total of seven people remained in custody.
Police quickly detained the suspected knifeman next to the steps of an opera house about 500 metres away.
He is from Pakistan and arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
A second suspect was detained moments after the attack and prosecutors but has since been released without charge.
Charlie Hebdo vacated its offices after the 2015 attack and is now in a secret location. The building is now used by a television production company.
Investigators said the militants had wanted to avenge the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in the magazine.
Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons on the eve of the trial in an apparent show of defiance.
It led Al-Qaeda, who claimed responsibility for the 2015 attack, to threaten to launch another attack.
France has experienced a wave of attacks by Islamist militants in the past few years.
Bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and sites around Paris killed 130 people, and in July 2016 an Islamist militant drove a truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86.
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