Tourist, 24, stabbed to death in Paris terrorist attack by ISIS-supporter at the Eiffel Tower was ‘devoted’ nurse
A 24-year-old tourist who was stabbed to death in a terrorist attack in Paris by an ISIS supporter was a retirement home nurse, it emerged today.
Collin -identified by his first name only – was the first victim of Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, 26 who also injured a British man near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night.
The convicted terrorist used a kitchen knife and hammer during the bloodbath close to the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab who was meant to be under surveillance by France’s intelligence services, set upon Collin in front of his wife and another female friend.
German – Filipino Collin and his partner were nurses, and had worked in a retirement home in Germany since January, said an investigating source.
“The murder victim was devoted to caring for other people, “he added.
“During his holiday in Paris he had visited the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Disneyland.”
Following the attack on Collin, Rajabpour-Miyandoab, who kept screaming “Aluhu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is the greatest” – and professing his support for ISIS, targeted a British national identified only as Melvyn, 66.
Melvyn, who was on holiday was on Monday recovering from a right eye wound in a hospital in central Paris.
The terrorist also attacked a 60-year-old French father called Thierry who had been out walking with his wife and child, and he too was still in hospital on Monday.
Following a chase, and the intervention of a taxi driver, Rajabpour-Miyandoab was finally disabled by police using tasers.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab is expected to be charged with a range of offences including terrorist murder today.
France’s Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, confirmed the suspect had officially been on an S-list, for surveillance.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab had expressed his anger at the mass killing of Muslims in Gaza by Israeli armed forces, and said “France was complicit,” said Mr Darmanin.
In 2018, Rajabpour-Miyandoab was convicted to five years in prison for terrorist conspiracy.
He was let out of prison early in 2020, and put on a treatment programme for “psychiatric and neurological problems,” according to an investigating source.
The son of two Iranian refugees who was born in France, he had converted to Islam in 2015 after being radicalised online by an ISIS supporter, according to prosecution documents.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab was well known for forging online links with other terrorists including Larossi Aballa, who went on to stab two police officers to death in Magnanville in June 2016.
Another Facebook friend was Adel Kermiche, one of the perpetrators of the stabbing to death of a Catholic priest in Saint-Étienne du Rouvray in the same year.
Many of those linked with such crimes were, like Rajabpour-Miyandoab, on S-Files, but managed to carry out atrocities anyway.
Rajabpour-Miyandoab later claimed to have completed a deradicalization programme, claiming he had lost interest in terrorism.
In court in 2018, he said: “Islamism was ruining my life, which claiming he had taken to drinking beer and eating pork – activities which are barred to practising Muslims.
But online activity showed that Rajabpour-Miyandoab was still researching how to make phosphorus bombs.