Fully veiled woman armed with a knife arrested in Paris

Was this another attack similar to the one in Villejuif? In the early evening, on Sunday, January 5, a 37-year-old woman, gloved and dressed in a niqab, was arrested at Austerlitz station in Paris, reported French political magazine Le Point. She was carrying a 15 cm blade and a Quran in her open satchel.

Her behavior at the station quickly intrigued a young man waiting in the passenger room. Fully veiled, she went back and forth, seeming to speak on her own and waiting for no train or any particular traveler.

She had no identity document on her either, and this resident of the immigrant district Seine-Saint-Denis did not try to justify the presence of the weapon at the time of her arrest.

However, she clarified that she had not been seeking to harm “herself or anyone else”. Finally, from her declared identity, the police were able to observe that this woman was on list in the Persons Wanted File (FPR) and sought as a “missing person”.

She complied without resistance when members of the security forces asked her to remove her veil. She was then searched to ensure that she did not have an explosives belt and her belongings were inspected using a detection dog, before she was placed in police custody.

Even though is has not been established that the woman was seeking to carry out any attack, her peculiar attitude raises questions, a few days after the broadcast on January 1 of a propaganda video in French of an Islamic State jihadist showing how attack the “disbelievers” in France with a “simple blade”.

Already last Friday, a man had attacked passers-by with a knife, in a park in Villejuif, with the cry of “Allah Akbar”. He had killed one person and injured two others. The following day, in Metz, a radicalized man brandished a knife while shouting the same incantation, without injuring a victim.