A man on the French S-File terrorist watchlist was arrested over the weekend in Marseille after brandishing a large knife and threatening locals and passers-by in the street.
The 27-year-old man, identified as Ali B., who was dressed in the traditional male Islamic garb known as the djellaba, was arrested on Saturday evening at around 8 pm in the 14th district of Marseille after he had threatened several people with a 12-inch-long kitchen knife.
Witnesses stated that the man had been praying in public when the police arrived on the scene and soon began to threaten the police as well, brandishing his knife. Officers approached the man and used an electric stun gun to subdue him, broadcaster BFMTV reports.
According to the broadcaster the man, who is on the S-file terror watchlist, is also well-known to police for previous charges of attempted homicide of a person holding public authority.
After the man was taken into police custody he was then taken to a local hospital to treat injuries he sustained as a result of his arrest as well as a psychiatric evaluation.
The incident is not the first to involve a radicalised Muslim man armed with a knife either threatening locals and police or actually attacking them this year in France.
In May a man was arrested in Chantilly after he stabbed a woman in the neck who had picked him up as a hitchhiker, allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” during the attack.
According to investigators, the man stabbed the woman after she accompanied him into a hotel and he was denied a room because he did not possess the required paperwork.
“For reasons that remain to be clarified, this same individual would then have physically attacked the young woman, carrying a knife at the level of her neck,” a local prosecutor said.