A man who should have been deported in 2022 was arrested after a stabbing spree at a Lyon metro station on Sunday afternoon, leading to right-wing critics of the government to point to failure by the state to protect the public.
The peace of what is described as a quiet Lyon neighbourhood was shattered on Sunday afternoon after a knifeman launched a rampage at the city’s Place Jean Jaurès Metro station. Four people were injured, three seriously, but there were no fatalities.
The suspect arrested at the scene is a 27-year-old Moroccan man who, authorities say, is subject to a OQTF (an ‘Obligation de quitter la France’ or order to leave the country) which was issued as far back as 2022. Embarrassingly for the French government, this means the suspect — who is known to the police for drugs possession — has been in France without authorisation for years.
The fact the migrant male suspect in the stabbing shouldn’t even have been in France at all at the time of Sunday’s attack has invited scorn from right-wing politicians in France, who say it demonstrates the failure of the government to take action to safeguard lives. Leader of the populist-right National Rally (formerly known as the Front National) Jordan Bardella pointed in particular to that unenforced removal order.
Municipale police control the traffic outside Place Jean Jaures metro station where three people were injured during a knife attack, in Lyon on May 26, 2024. A police source told AFP that the lives of the three victims were not in danger, adding that two of them were wounded in the abdomen and a third in the arm. An investigation was launched into “attempted homicide”, prosecutors said. (Photo by OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images)
Municipale police control the traffic outside Place Jean Jaures metro station where three people were injured during a knife attack, in Lyon on May 26, 2024. A police source told AFP that the lives of the three victims were not in danger, adding that two of them were wounded in the abdomen and a third in the arm. An investigation was launched into “attempted homicide”, prosecutors said. (Photo by OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images)
He wrote: “The individual who stabbed three people in Lyon has been a Moroccan under OQTF since… 2022. He has not been deported. Always the same dysfunctions, always the same attacks, always the same insecurity. Government failure continues.”
Marion Marechal, a member of France’s right-wing Le Pen political dynasty who broke with National Rally to run the more acutely pro-border control Reconquête party with famed French polemicist Éric Zemmour, contrasted the peace of France on a Sunday afternoon and the chaos of lawlessness, saying: “The weather is nice. Your child takes the metro in a quiet neighbourhood. He meets a Moroccan illegal under OQTF and is stabbed with 3 other passengers. [Just] like that… This is our daily life in the land of Macron, Moretti and Darmanin”.
The suspect has an extensive history of mental health issues, reports Europe1, and has been in psychiatric hospital for treatment “several times”. The man is said to have a “fairly heavy psychiatric profile”.
The Moroccan male has been charged with attempted murder. Police say they are not aware of a terrorism motive, but the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor say they have placed the case “under evaluation” and haven’t come to a conclusion yet.
Regional Prefect (governor) Fabienne Buccio said after the attack, local newspaper Lyon Capitale reports that the attack “could have been much more serious” had the police not arrived and intervened at the scene of the attack, the exit of the metro station, so quickly. It is reported police had already been alerted to the man’s unusual behaviour after he boarded a metro train earlier in the day.
The remark of populist Bardella “Always the same dysfunctions, always the same attacks” appears to be a reference to another recent case which bears some resemblance to Sunday’s mass-stabbing. The case, which was immediately declared terrorism, saw a 29-year-old Algerian migrant knifeman also under a OQTF order shot dead by police after setting fire to a Synagogue in Rouen.