STRASBOURG - The fugitive
Strasbourg man suspected of shooting and knifing people as he
shouted "Allahu Akbar" at the French city's Christmas market is
a criminal who turned radical Islamist in jail, officials say.
Neighbours remember Cherif Chekatt as an ordinary local guy,
but to security agencies the 29-year-old had represented a
potential threat for some time, his beliefs hardened behind
bars.
Chekatt grew up in the Cite du Hohberg, a large, tough
housing estate built in the 1960s, where he lived at his
parents' apartment in the Rue Tite Live.
He has 27 criminal convictions for theft and violence,
officials say, and has spent time in French, German and Swiss
prisons. Now police are seeking him as the suspect who killed at
least two people on Tuesday night.
Neighbours said they believed Chekatt's brother was a
radicalised Muslim but had always seen Cherif as a typical young
man who dressed in jogging pants and trainers, unlike his
sibling who preferred a traditional robe.
This undated handout photo provided by the French police, shows Cherif Chekatt, the suspect in the shooting in Strasbourg, France on Tuesday Dec. 11, 2018. Picture: French Police via AP.
"He had spent quite a bit of time in prison and since then
we didn't see him much. He had a radicalised big brother who was
always in a djellaba, always at the mosque," said a 20-year-old
youth who has known Chekatt since he was young, withholding his
name. "It's frightening when you know he lived just next to
you."
Police were interrogating Chekatt's father, mother and two
brothers on Wednesday in custody.
France has long struggled to integrate western Europe's
largest Muslim population, for years mired in a virulent debate
over national identity and the role of Islam in a country that
holds fast to state secularism.
A wave of militant attacks since 2015, most of them
commissioned or inspired by Islamic State, has killed about 240
people and exposed France's difficulties in tackling homegrown
militants and jihadists returning from wars abroad.
Strasbourg deputy mayor Robert Herrmann said about 400
people living in and around Strasbourg were on the security
agencies' "Fiche S" watchlist, including the suspect.
"We know this risk and we trust our services to put an end
to these murders," he said, before adding: "There will, though,
always be a way through the net."
WATCHLIST
Deputy Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Chekatt had been
radicalised in jail, becoming an apologist for terrorism, but
there had been no signs he would turn violent.
"He encouraged a radical religious practice in prison but
nothing indicated that he would carry out an attack," Nunez said
on France Inter radio.
Police said the attack followed a police search of Chekatt's
flat in Strasbourg in a homicide investigation on Tuesday
morning. Chekatt was absent, but a .22 calibre Long Rifle and
four knives were found.
A German security source said that following a conviction
for "aggravated theft" Chekatt had been jailed in the southern
German city of Constance from August 2016 to February 2017.
He was released before the end of his two-year, three-month
prison sentence into the custody of German police so that he
could be deported to France.
A second German security source said he had been banned from
re-entering the country.
Several German officials and sources said Chekatt had not
been identified as a security threat. It was not immediately
clear if or how French officials had communicated their concerns
to German authorities.
The rampage surprised neighbours. "It's a shock. We ask
ourselves questions when something like this happens, especially
as it is a calm area," said a teenage acquaintance of Chekatt.
Nunez said more than 20,000 people in France were designated
as Fiche S and that a little over half of those were being
monitored.
"We follow many individuals like him ... Being labeled Fiche
S does not forecast the level of threat they may pose," the
deputy minister said.