Like I keep saying, police assurances that they’re following these jihadis rings hollow after each mass murder they commit…
Revealed: Strasbourg suspect, 29, had a violent past, was tagged a ‘threat to the state’ by authorities and escaped arrest just HOURS before carnage at Christmas market
- Cherif Chekatt opened fire at Strasbourg’s Christmas Market at 8pm last night
- At least three people have been killed and a further 12 injured, six seriously
- The gunman was injured in a police shootout and fled the scene in a hijacked taxi
- Police have said the was on a security watchlist that identified him as a threat
- The 29-year-old was born and raised in Strasbourg and has a criminal record
The man suspected of last night’s atrocity which left three dead and 12 injured under the lights of Strasbourg’s Christmas market is a convicted criminal who had been identified as a threat to the French state by the security services.
Police sources named him early today as Cherif Chekatt, a 29-year-old native of the city, born on February 4, 1989.
They say he has a lengthy criminal record for robberies and the Interior Minister described him last night as a ‘common criminal’.
According to a source close to the investigation, he was sentenced to two years in prison in 2011 for a knife attack on a 16-year-old.
Police knocked at his door only yesterday morning to arrest him in connection with a violent robbery.
They were following up a lead connected to his past criminal behaviour, rather than acting on any intelligence that he planned to commit mass murder. He was not at home, but investigators found a grenade among his belongings.
Christophe Castaner, France’s Interior Minister, said that after Tuesday morning’s failed raid the suspect ‘went on the run’.