French investigators placed the 18-year-old girlfriend of the Islamist gunman who killed four people last week in southern France under formal investigation on Monday.
Being placed under “formal investigation” in France indicates that magistrates have found sufficient evidence of wrongdoing that an investigation can go forward, possibly to trial.
The woman, whom FRANCE 24 is declining to identify, told investigators that she converted to Islam when she was 16. She was on a watchlist of potential radicals but denied “having been informed of or associated with the deadly plans of her boyfriend”, Paris Prosecutor François Molins told a news conference on Tuesday.
Molins said the girl posted online a Koran verse “indicating that infidels were promised to hell” just a few hours before the attacks in Carcassone and Trèbes. He told reporters that she shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) while in custody and “shows all the signs of radicalisation”.
Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national who was on a watchlist of suspected extremists, killed a butcher and an elderly shopper when he stormed the Super U supermarket in Trèbes after firing at a group of off-duty police and shooting dead a man when hijacking a car in the nearby town of Carcassonne.
Policeman Arnaud Beltrame was the fourth person killed during Lakdim’s rampage. He agreed to swap himself for a hostage inside the supermarket but was then killed by Lakdim, who slit his throat.