The latest development from the Paris hostage, is that the suspect who had been holding two women since Monday afternoon in a shop in the 12th arrondissement in Paris with a knife, has been arrested and his second hostage released, announced Gérald Darmanin on Twitter.
The Police also reported that no body was injured in the operation to arrest the suspect and free the hostages, AFP reports.
“The Paris hostage taker has been arrested. There are no injuries. Thank you to the @prefpolice agents and in particular to the BRI”, tweeted the Minister of the Interior.
According to the report, the Paris hostage taker known to suffer from psychiatric disorders, 56, presented himself under the identity of a former Tunisian magistrate, and had detained the two women; a mother and her daughter.
He had released the mother unharmed, shortly before 10 p.m., after long negotiations led by the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI).
These continued all night long in this hardware store in rue d’Aligre, near the Bastille, where the hostage taker was entrenched, before his arrest shortly after 8:00 a.m. and the release of the second hostage, without make a victim.
The prefect of police Didier Lallement arrived on site at the end of the night.
Given the psychiatric profile of the Paris hostage taker, the terrorist trail was quickly ruled out by a police source. He was notably known to the police for having harassed a local doctor at his doctor’s office.
After entering the shop shortly before 3:30 p.m., the man first asked to “speak to the Minister of Justice”, Eric Dupond-Moretti, according to the police source.
“Following the hostage-taking in the 12th arrondissement, the minister obviously informed the negotiators that he was at their disposal,” said the entourage of the Keeper of the Seals.
He also spoke, at his request, with Sylvie Noachovitch, the lawyer of the former gardener Omar Raddad convicted in 1994 for the murder of a rich widow, Ghislaine Marchal, in Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes). Justice ordered last Thursday to relaunch the investigations in this case, the first step before the review of the trial.
“He admires her a lot and thinks she is a very good lawyer,” a source close to the investigation told AFP.
Throughout the hostage-taking, the various accesses to the rue d’Aligre, known for its numerous food shops and its market, were blocked by police officers and the perimeter was also secured by soldiers from the Sentinel force. deployed as part of the Vipirate plan, noted an AFP journalist.
An investigation was opened including the head of “kidnapping” and was entrusted to the police station of the 12th arrondissement, said the Paris prosecutor’s office.