On 20 December 2014, a man in

Joué-lès-Tours Joué-lès-Tours (, literally ''Joué near Tours'') is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France. It is the largest suburb of the city of Tours, and is adjacent to it on the southwest. Population Toponymy The name of Jou� ...

near the city of

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metro ...

in central France entered a police station and attacked officers with a knife, shouting "

Allahu Akbar Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", a ...

" and injuring three before he was shot and killed. The attack was categorised as a case of religiously inspired terrorism by Europol, and has been reported by Europol as well as mappings by

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

and AFP as inspired by the

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...

(ISIL).

Perpetrator

The attacker was identified as Bertrand Nzohabonayo, age 20, a French citizen and former rap musician born in Burundi in 1994, he was known to the police for minor crimes but was not on any watchlist. The attacker had taken ''Bilal'' as his new name upon conversion to Islam, and had been posting Islamist material on his Facebook page, including a photograph of the black flag of the Islamic State. In Burundi, police arrested the attacker's brother, a man with known Islamist sympathies and claimed that they had informed French authorities the previous year that both brothers should be regarded as suspect due to their extreme religious views.

Motivation

The

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

described the attack, along with the

vehicle-ramming attack A vehicle-ramming attack is an assault in which a perpetrator deliberately rams a vehicle into a building, crowd of people, or another vehicle. According to Stratfor Global Intelligence analysts, this attack represents a relatively new milita ...

s on 21 December in Dijon and 22 December in Nantes as "the first ISIS-linked attacks" in France. According to ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'', the attack was "apparently inspired by a video" circulated by ISIL calling on French Muslims to attack non-Muslims using vehicles. According to

David C. Rapoport David Charles Rapoport (born January 7, 1929, Pittsburgh, PA) is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who focuses on the study of terrorism. Biography Rapoport received his Ph.D. at Universit ...

of the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

, these three attacks can be understood in the context of the rise of the Islamic State in Syria. "In September 2014, after the U.S. organized its airstrikes, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman called on Muslims in Western countries to find an infidel and ‘smash his head with a rock’, poison him, run him over with a car or ‘destroy his crops’. Two months later a video released in French contained virtually the same message and a series of strange 'lone wolf' attacks followed on three consecutive days, the perpetrators declaring “'God is Great' in Arabic. Three policemen were stabbed in Joué-lès-Tours, and vehicles were used to run over eleven pedestrians in Dijon and ten in Nantes."

Aftermath

The attack was categorised as "religiously inspired terrorism" by Europol, as reported to them by France. Following this attack, the 2014 Dijon attack and

2014 Nantes attack On 22 December 2014, Sébastien Sarron ran over ten pedestrians in his white van at the Christmas market of the French city of Nantes, before attempting suicide by stabbing himself. Ten people, including the suspect, suffered non-fatal injuries; o ...

, which were deemed to be unrelated, the French government heightened the nation's security.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tours police station stabbing 2014 crimes in France Attacks in Europe in 2014 Attacks on police stations in the 2010s Converts to Islam Deaths by firearm in France December 2014 crimes in Europe December 2014 events in France French people of Burundian descent History of Tours, France Terrorist incidents in France Islamic terrorism in France Islamic terrorist incidents in 2014 Stabbing attacks in 2014 Stabbing attacks in France Terrorist incidents involving knife attacks Crimes against police officers in France

Perpetrator

Motivation

Aftermath

See also

References