Last modified on October 13, 2019, at 23:25

Paris Police Prefecture Massacre

The Paris Police Prefecture Massacre was a murder of four people by a knife attack perpetrated on Oct. 3, 2019, by an IT worker employed at a high-security police station located on the Île de la Cité. This location was not far from the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral in Paris.

The attack illustrated the infiltration of French law enforcement by Islamic extremists. As reported by French news:[1]

The assailant, Mickael Harpon, converted to Islam about 10 years ago and, according to investigators, had adopted increasingly radical beliefs and been in contact with a radical Salafist imam.

The perpetrator held a top-secret security clearance.[2] He was shot dead to end the attack. The conservative French newspaper Le Figaro explained:

If we didn’t see this coming, it’s because we didn’t want to. And if we didn’t want to, it’s because we in France are in denial about Islamic extremism. It’s a malady, a deliberate blindness that we can overcome only by admitting it.

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