Europe

Europe

Paris attacker was French army reject

11 December 2015 19:11 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Foued Mohamed-Aggad, one of three young men who shot dead 90 people at a Paris concert hall a month ago, was turned down by the French army and possibly also by the police before Islamic State took him on to fight for them, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Army recruiters in the eastern city of Strasbourg decided after conducting physical and psychological tests that he was not a suitable candidate to bear arms as a French soldier.

Mohamed-Aggad's identity was only established this week because of a text message his mother Fatima received.

The text came from his wife, Hadjira, in Syria. It told the mother of four that her younger son had died "with his brothers" on Nov. 13, the night of the attacks.

Fearing the worst, and with her elder son already in prison on suspicion of having terrorism links, the Moroccan-born woman went to the family's lawyer.

DNA matching followed, and the profile of yet another radicalized young man, from yet another part of France, emerged this week, joining other home-grown French and Belgian jihadis already identified as the killers of 130 victims at the Bataclan concert hall and elsewhere in Paris.

Mohamed-Aggad had set off for Syria in 2013, and while his departure was no secret in his small home town of Wissembourg in northeastern France, some who knew him were shocked to learn of his role in the Paris killings.

"I can't believe it was him," said Yazar Mesut, a 46-year-old neighbor told Reuters in one of the town's bars. "He was intelligent and polite, knew what respect was about and didn't act like a big shot."

According to another neighbor, who gave his name as Youssef, the young man failed the police entrance exam by just a few marks, and was also turned down by the army.

"That's the only time I saw him disappointed. He was complaining. He reckoned it was because of his foreign origins," said Youssef.