Cherif C. Is Strasbourg Suspect in Market Attack: Reports

[Valin]

Heavy

Jessica McBride

Dec. 11 2018

A man known only as “Cherif C.” has been named by French news media as the suspect in a possible terrorist attack at a Strasbourg Christmas Market near the border between Germany and France. Le Figaro reported that “the alleged perpetrator of the shooting is Chérif C.” who was born in 1989.

Authorities have not yet confirmed the shooting suspect’s identity.

It’s common in criminal cases in Europe for suspects’ last names to not be released. The shooting broke out on December 11, 2018. According to France 24, it’s not yet clear whether the motive was terrorism related, and that’s under investigation. At least two people were killed and 11 more injured, with seven people in serious condition, at the popular holiday attraction, according to BBC.

(Snip)

French News Media Are Reporting that Cherif C. May Have Been Radicalized

According to AFP journalist Marc Burleigh, the suspect in the Strasbourg shooting has a criminal record, was reportedly known as a possible security threat and was “possibly identified” as a “radicalised individual named Cherif C.” The French anti-terror police are handling the investigation. Terrified restaurant patrons took shelter after gunfire broke out.

(Snip)

The local French newspaper DNA reported that the suspect was from Hohberg. France 24 reports the suspect was supposed to be arrested for attempted murder before the attack and “was sentenced in 2011 to two years in prison for assault with a weapon.”

(Snip)

[Valin]

 

 

[Valin]

Strasbourg: Police make public appeal in Cherif Chekatt manhunt

Dec. 13 2018

 

French police have appealed for help in finding a man suspected of a Christmas market gun attack in Strasbourg that killed three people, and left a fourth brain dead and 12 others wounded.

Hundreds of security personnel are searching for Cherif Chekatt, 29, on both sides of the Franco-German border.

The suspect had a string of criminal convictions and had become a radical Islamist while in prison.

Police say he is highly dangerous and should not be approached.

French officials announced on Thursday that a third person had died in the aftermath of the Strasbourg attack. Five people were seriously wounded, they said, including a man described as brain dead.

(Snip)

[Valin]

Terror in Strasbourg

Will the attack on the capital of Alsace concentrate French minds?

Rodger Kaplan

Dec. 14 2018

“They had to shoot back.” Laconically, the Interior Ministry reported why the life of Cheriff Chekatt, 29, ended Tuesday night on a street in Neudorf, a Strasbourg neighborhood not far from the Cathedral Square where a day earlier three people were shot dead by a man with a gun and the words Allahu Akbar on his lips.

The cops said that an investigation would determine if they got the right man. The one they got shot at a patrol when asked to halt. Close to a thousand policemen were engaged in a manhunt since the shooting, some fears were expressed that he had made his way over a bridge to Germany; German cops too were mobilized.

In a way, the crime and its aftermath encapsulates what Europe, the union, represents. The suspect, Strasbourg-born of Moroccan parents, would have got across the border without formalities; but the police forces on both sides work together as a matter of routine. Risks; benefits. Taxpayers are rarely consulted.

Chekatt, a career criminal before his 30^th birthday, had been sent back to France from a German prison after serving a sentence for robbery. He had done time in France as well, and had a police record in Switzerland. He was known to be a habitual delinquent, but also a politicized one: he had found religion in jail and was known to have contacts with radical Islamists. His name was on the S-file, a list of individuals of varying concern to the police.

(Snip)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________