The suspect held over an attack against a gas company site is escorted by police officers during investigations in Saint-Priest, near Lyon, France, June 28, 2015. A security official tells The Associated Press the move to his home aims to find his passport, to determine if he traveled overseas.
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Salhi had been on a national security watchlist from 2006 to 2008 and later raised red flags for his links to radical movements between 2001 and 2014.
The prosecutor said that Salhi claimed to have strangled his boss “with one hand” before stopping 500 meters before the factory to decapitate him with a knife with a 25-centimeter blade.
But Salhi was in “regular contact” with the French jihadist Sebastian Yunis, 30, known to have left for Syria last November.
Francois Molins said the man accused of the attack, Yassin Salhi, sent two photos of his employer’s corpse to an acquaintance in Syria.
Then Salhi, a truck driver with a history of radical Islamic ties dating back to 2003, drove into the plant filled with flammable gas canisters, Molins said.
“He hasn’t explained” why he attached the head to the fence, or shouted out “Allahu Akbar”(God is greatest) as firefighters overpowered him as he attempted to open bottles of acetone in a warehouse at the factory, a source told reporters.
The acquaintance, Sebastien Younes, indicated that ISIS may distribute the photos as part of its macabre propaganda campaign to attract radicalized Westerners, said the prosecutor.
Flanked by heavily armed police in masks and flak jackets, Salhi was taken on Sunday to the vehicle park where he said he hadkilled Cornara, before retracing the route he had followed to the chemical plant.
He has denied any religious motivation behind the attack, Molins said, adding to initial confusion about whether the incident was ideologically informed or the act of a disgruntled employee.
He is under questioning on terrorism charges.
His attack that has not been claimed, “corresponded exactly to the orders given by Daesh” (The term used in France for Isis), said Molins, pointing specifically to the decapitation of his boss Hervé Cornara.
The detached scalp of his chief was at found holding on the problem of causing web-site of You can introduce.S-based gas and chemical compounds firm Air Products, at the side of custom manner career of one’s Muslim assurance.
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The attack last Friday came five months after 17 people were killed in Paris by Islamist militants who targeted the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical journal and a Jewish shop.
