French stabbing accused linked to Islam!

Police investigating the stabbing of a French soldier in Paris have on Wednesday, arrested a suspect who sources describe as an adherent of ‘‘radical Islam’’.

‘‘The suspected perpetrator of the attack on a soldier Saturday evening in La Defense (business district) was arrested this morning,’’ Interior Minister Manuel Valls said in a statement.

Sources close to the investigation said the 22-year-old man had been a follower of a ‘‘traditionalist, even radical Islam for the last three or four years’’.

But the sources urged caution in a case that is still in its early stages, saying the suspect was not previously known to authorities as a radical.

"The investigation will determine at what time he decided to carry out a jihadist act," one of the sources said.

The suspect was known to police, having carried out petty crimes and thefts, a police source said.

A police source said he was identified thanks to video footage from the crime and traces of his DNA found on items left at the scene in a plastic bag, including a knife and a bottle.

A state anti-terrorism unit is investigating the stabbing of a French soldier in Paris that police said may have been inspired by the killing of a British serviceman in a London street.

The soldier was wounded while on patrol in La Defense, a business district west of the French capital.

Private First Class Cedric Cordier was approached from behind and stabbed in the neck with a small-bladed knife.

Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told reporters that he had been targeted because of his profession.

His attacker, said to be a bearded man of North African origin, escaped and a police hunt is under way.

President François Hollande said there was no sign so far of a direct link with the killing of a soldier in London on Wednesday, for which two suspected Islamists were arrested.

France was rocked in March of last year by a string of killings by Islamist militant Mohamed Merah in the Toulouse area. He shot dead both French soldiers and Jewish schoolchildren before being killed in a police siege.

A French soldier patrolling a business area of western Paris was stabbed in the neck on Saturday by a man who quickly fled the scene and was still being sought, a police source said.

The soldier was patrolling in uniform with two other men as part of France's Vigipirate anti-terrorist surveillance plan when he was approached from behind and stabbed in the neck, with a knife or a box-cutter, Reuters reports.

French daily Le Parisien cited police sources as saying the suspected attacker was a bearded man of North African origin about 30 years old, and was wearing an Arab-style garment under his jacket.

"We still don't know the exact circumstances of the attack or the identity of the attacker, but we are exploring all options," French president, Francois Hollande, said of the incident.

Hollande refused to make a connection between the incident in Paris and the brutal murder of British military drummer, Lee Rigby, who was beheaded in Woolwich, South East London by two men, acting out of revenge for the UK’s involvement in Afghan and Iraqi wars.

"They tried to kill the soldier because he was a soldier," said France's defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, AFP reported.

The Police Prefect for Paris’s Hauts-de-Seine area, Pierre-Andre Peyvel, said that despite losing a considerable amount of blood, the injured soldier would survive and was being treated in hospital.

"The wound appears to be quite serious, but it's not life-threatening," he told iTele news television.

Peyvel said the attacker was able to flee into a crowded shopping area in the La Defense business neighborhood before the two other patrolling soldiers, were able to react.

However, Peyvel declined to confirm or deny the description of the perpetrator, which appeared in Le Parisien, saying that further details about his identity would follow.

France is currently on high alert for attacks by Islamist militants following its military operation in Mali this January, which prompted threats against French interests from the North African wing of Al-Qaeda.

Without a clear motive and reasoning for such attacks, there are two basic explanations that people tend to believe, activist and journalist Sukant Chandan told RT.

 “People either take the French government or the British government are lying on things like Woolwich the other day, or what’s happening in Paris today, or they say it’s all about the foreign policy of France or Britain,” he said. “I think that these positions don’t hold enough substance as an explanation.”
Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_05_29/French-police-arrests-a-man-who-stabbed-a-soldier-in-Paris-last-week-8780/