Farid Ikken, the attacker, worked as a journalist in France as well as Sweden and received an EU Commission’s National Journalist Prize Against Discrimination award for a report in which he called out the alleged racism towards migrants.
The Algerian jihadist had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in a video found at his apartment, an investigation source told AFP on Wednesday.
But Ikken had listed himself as a specialist in “human rights, development and democracy”, in a number of his university papers remaining online, The Independent noted. His friends believed him to be “completely secular”.
One of his articles was published by the Swedish United Nations Association, titled “War on Terror: 7 Dark Years for Human Rights”.
In his award-winning article, Ikken also complained about “asylum seekers who are not entitled to medical care and who are therefore forced to seek medical care, as well as healthcare staff and others who still provide healthcare to asylum seekers,” according to an European Commission statement.
He won a prize for a article about how illegal immigrants were being "discriminated" against. https://t.co/CL5U0CTfuC
— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) June 7, 2017
The 40-year-old, who was shot and wounded by police, had shouted that he was “a soldier of the caliphate” during the attack on Tuesday and that he was acting in revenge “for Syria”.
“He was someone who believed a lot in democratic ideals, the expression of free thinking,” his thesis director Arnaud Mercier said. “Nothing, absolutely nothing, foretold that one day he’d be a jihadi who’d want to kill a policeman in the name of I don’t know what cause.”
One of his friends told the French weekly L ‘Express: “He wasn’t even wearing a beard.”
Not only was he carrying a hammer, but also two kitchen knives, law enforcement says.
Ikken had previously studied at Uppsala University, graduating in 2011. According to BFMTV he spoke Swedish, Arabic and French. He got married to a Swedish woman in 2005, but they have split up.
He had obtained a Masters degree while living in Sweden, and was busy doing a doctorate in media studies in France. The University of Lorraine’s president, Pierre Mutzenhardt, told France Bleu radio that the attacker had been preparing his thesis on North African media since 2014.