Flights at Paris’ Orly airport were returning to normal Sunday a day after a man triggered a major security alert and travel chaos when he attacked a soldier before being shot dead.
Anti-terror investigators Sunday released the father of the assailant but were continuing to hold his brother and cousin as they sought to build a profile of Ziyed Ben Belgacem, a 39-year-old French national.
All three family members had made contact with the police themselves, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told a press conference late on Saturday.
Molins said Ben Belgacem grabbed a female soldier and put a gun to her head, seizing her assault rifle.
“Put your weapons down, hands on your heads. I’m here to die for Allah. In any case, people are going to die,” the attacker told the troops in Molins’s account of the attack.
He tried to use the soldier as a human shield but she dropped to her knees, giving her two colleagues an opportunity to shoot him.