Prosecutor charges the Notre Dame attacker

Associated Press

PARIS

The hammer-wielding man who attacked police officers patrolling in front of Notre Dame Cathedral appears to have radicalized himself through the internet and was unknown to French police and intelligence services, the chief prosecutor in Paris said Saturday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said the 40-year-old Algerian doctoral student was given preliminary charges Saturday of attempted murder of a police officer in connection with a terrorist enterprise and crime of terrorist conspiracy.

One police officer was slightly injured in Tuesday’s attack.

The assailant – crying out “This is for Syria!”– was shot by police. He received hospital treatment for a shotgun injury to the torso.

Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference Saturday that the man had the “profile of a neophyte” that counterterrorism services fear as much as extremists who are trained to carry out attacks.

The assailant was identified as Farid Ikken this week by a nephew in Algeria, lawyer Sofiane Ikken, and a friend, Algerian journalist Kamal Ouhnia.

Molins, who hasn’t identified the suspect by his full name, confirmed that he was an ex-journalist born in Akbou, a town in northern Algeria, who was legally living in France as a student working on his doctoral thesis.

The man described himself as a Sunni Muslim who started a “quite radical” religious observance about 10 months ago, Molins said.