On 20 December 2014, a man in
Joué-lès-Tours
Joué-lès-Tours (, literally ''Joué near Tours'') is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.
It is the largest suburb of the city of Tours, and is adjacent to it on the southwest.
Population
Toponymy
The name of Jou ...
near the city of
Tours
Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metro ...
in central France entered a police station and attacked officers with a knife, shouting "
Allahu Akbar
Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", a ...
" and injuring three before he was shot and killed. The attack was categorised as a case of religiously inspired terrorism by
Europol,
and has been reported by Europol as well as mappings by
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
and
AFP as inspired by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
(ISIL).
Perpetrator
The attacker was identified as Bertrand Nzohabonayo, age 20, a French citizen and former rap musician born in
Burundi in 1994, he was known to the police for minor crimes but was not on any watchlist.
The attacker had taken ''Bilal'' as his new name upon conversion to
Islam, and had been posting Islamist material on his Facebook page, including a photograph of the black flag of the Islamic State.
In Burundi, police arrested the attacker's brother, a man with known Islamist sympathies and claimed that they had informed French authorities the previous year that both brothers should be regarded as suspect due to their extreme religious views.
Motivation
The
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
described the attack, along with the
vehicle-ramming attack
A vehicle-ramming attack is an assault in which a perpetrator deliberately rams a vehicle into a building, crowd of people, or another vehicle. According to Stratfor Global Intelligence analysts, this attack represents a relatively new milita ...
s on
21 December in Dijon and
22 December in Nantes as "the first ISIS-linked attacks" in France.
According to ''
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'', the attack was "apparently inspired by a video" circulated by ISIL calling on French Muslims to attack non-Muslims using vehicles.
According to
David C. Rapoport
David Charles Rapoport (born January 7, 1929, Pittsburgh, PA) is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who focuses on the study of terrorism.
Biography
Rapoport received his Ph.D. at Universit ...
of the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
, these three attacks can be understood in the context of the rise of the Islamic State in Syria. "In September 2014, after the U.S. organized its airstrikes, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman called on Muslims in Western countries to find an infidel and ‘smash his head with a rock’, poison him, run him over with a car or ‘destroy his crops’. Two months later a video released in French contained virtually the same message and a series of strange 'lone wolf' attacks followed on three consecutive days, the perpetrators declaring “'God is Great' in Arabic. Three policemen were stabbed in Joué-lès-Tours, and vehicles were used to run over eleven pedestrians in Dijon and ten in Nantes."
Aftermath
The attack was categorised as "religiously inspired terrorism" by Europol, as reported to them by France.
Following this attack, the
2014 Dijon attack and
2014 Nantes attack
On 22 December 2014, Sébastien Sarron ran over ten pedestrians in his white van at the Christmas market of the French city of Nantes, before attempting suicide by stabbing himself. Ten people, including the suspect, suffered non-fatal injuries; o ...
, which were deemed to be unrelated, the French government heightened the nation's security.
See also
*
January 2016 Paris police station attack
On 7 January 2016 in Paris, a man wearing a fake explosive belt attacked police officers with a meat cleaver while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" He was shot and killed by officers when he failed to obey an order to stop.
The attempted attack took plac ...
*
Stabbing as a terrorist tactic
Stabbing attacks, which have been used as a terrorist tactic for thousands of years, became an increasingly common form of terrorist attack on random civilians in the 21st century, in particular during the 2010s and 2020s.
Like the vehicle-ramming ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tours police station stabbing
2014 crimes in France
Attacks in Europe in 2014
Attacks on police stations in the 2010s
Converts to Islam
Deaths by firearm in France
December 2014 crimes in Europe
December 2014 events in France
French people of Burundian descent
History of Tours, France
Terrorist incidents in France
Islamic terrorism in France
Islamic terrorist incidents in 2014
Stabbing attacks in 2014
Stabbing attacks in France
Terrorist incidents involving knife attacks
Crimes against police officers in France