French terror suspect took selfie with beheaded head and sent it to Canadian phone number
Sources close to the investigation said Salhi was radicalised more than a decade ago after contact with Muslim convert Frederic Jean Salvi.
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 28 June, 2015, 5:05pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 28 June, 2015, 5:05pm
Agence France-Presse in Paris
Members of France's Special Forces at Yassin Salhi's apartment building. Photo: AFP
French authorities were transferring the man suspected of beheading his boss in an alleged jihadist attack to Paris yesterday, as it emerged he sent a macabre “selfie” of the decapitation.
Anti-terror police will grill the suspect, Yassin Salhi, a 35-year-old father-of-three, as they search for clues and a motive for Friday’s attack on a gas warehouse near France’s second city of Lyon.
After several hours of silence, Salhi has begun to open up to investigators about the assault, which came six months after 17 were killed in Islamist attacks in Paris that began with the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
And Canadian authorities are trying to help France solve the case after it emerged Salhi sent a gruesome selfie photo of himself and the severed head to a WhatsApp number in Canada.
Investigators have warned however that it could be a relay number and the intended recipient could be anywhere in the world.
The probe is naturally focusing on Syria, where hundreds of French people have gone to wage jihad, officials said.
Anti-terrorist authorities have identified 473 people who have left France to fight in Iraq or Syria, according to sources close to the probe.
On Friday morning, Salhi rammed his van into the US-owned Air Products factory in what President Francois Hollande said was a “terrorist” attack designed to blow up the whole building. He was overpowered by a firefighter as he was trying to prise open a bottle of acetone in an apparent suicidal bid to destroy the factory.
Police then made the grisly discovery of the severed head of Salhi’s boss, 54-year-old father-of-one Herve Cornara, lashed to the gates of the factory near two flags with the Muslim profession of faith written on them.No terrorist group has said it carried out the French operation.
Sources close to the investigation said Salhi was radicalised more than a decade ago after contact with Muslim convert Frederic Jean Salvi – known as “Ali” – who is suspected of preparing attacks in Indonesia with al-Qaeda militants.
An autopsy on the victim has proved inconclusive, with experts unable to determine whether he was killed before being beheaded or decapitated alive.
Around 200 people in the town of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier – where the attack took place – staged a minute’s silence in the victim’s honour followed by a rousing and spontaneous rendition of the French national anthem.
One man, Philippe Ouastani, said he came to show solidarity with the victim. “It’s unheard of to decapitate someone in the 21st century. What weapons do we have to combat that? Being here, together.”
Another woman, wearing the Muslim headscarf, said “These acts have got nothing to do with religion. The Prophet never said to kill innocent people.”
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Salhi had been investigated for links to radical Salafists in Lyon, but was not known to have participated in terrorist activities and did not have a criminal record.
