A French court sentenced Egyptian Abdalla El Hamahmi to 30 years in prison for his machete attack on two soldiers at the Paris Louvre museum in 2017.
Judges in the Special Assize Court of Paris announced the sentence on Thursday after seven hours of deliberation.
During the trial, El Hamahmi had claimed that he had gone to the Louvre on February 3rd, 2017, to destroy various art masterpieces, such as the Venus de Milo statue and paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, in protest of France’s policy towards Syria, Le Parisien reports.
He told the court that upon seeing soldiers stationed in the museum, he attacked them with a pair of machetes “by reflex” and claimed to have acted like a “robot”.
The attack injured one soldier, who suffered a cut to the scalp, as El Hamahmi yelled “Allahu Akbar” before being shot and subdued.
El Hamahmi also initially made attempts to claim that a video of him pledging loyalty to the Islamic State was not authentic, but later admitted that he had made failed attempts to join the terrorist group in the Middle East prior to the attack.
Prosecutors claimed that El Hamahmi was motivated by radical Islamic ideology, and he continued to believe in it today. In addition, prosecutors noted he had travelled to France specifically to carry out the attack after getting a tourist visa from the United Arab Emirates.
Emmanuel Bidanda, the lawyer for the soldiers, added: “When you hit someone with a weapon in the head, it is not to clear a passage, it is to kill.”
The case is just the latest conviction in recent months related to terror incidents in France. Earlier this month, the main surviving defendant in the 2017 Champs Elysees terror attack was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Nourredine Allam was convicted of selling a Kalashnikov assault rifle to jihadist Karim Cheurfi prior to the latter’s attack on French police that left officer Xavier Jugelé dead.
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