By Hajer M'tiri
PARIS
The man accused of beheading his boss and attempting to explode an industrial-gas factory in southeastern France last week, had a terrorist motive and acted in accordance with Daesh methods, revealed a Paris prosecutor on Tuesday.
Last Friday, the suspect, Yassin Salhi, after beheading his boss, attempted to ram his vehicle into gas canisters in the factory owned by U.S. company Air Products, in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, in the French southeastern department of Isere.
"Yassin Salhi's attack corresponded very precisely to Daesh's trademark," said Paris chief prosecutor Francois Molins in a press conference.
Molins told reporters, the actions of Salhi, motivated by a personal hatred for his boss, "resembled a martyr operation".
Mollins said Salhi confessed to "knocking out his employer using a car jack and then strangling him with one hand," then decapitating him in the back of the van.
He hung the head of his boss, Herve Cornara, on the fence surrounding the factory.
Molins said Salhi was "visibly in regular contact" with a French man in Syria, which the suspect called "Younes", to which he sent a selfie taken with the head of his employer.
Salhi had left for work that morning armed with a knife and a gun replica, according to Molins.
The Paris prosecutor announced a criminal investigation was launched against Salhi for murder in connection with a terrorist group.
The attacker was known to French intelligence services due to alleged links with Salafist movements.
Salhi, a 35-year-old man from Saint-Priest, the fourth biggest suburb of Lyon, is a father of three and works as a delivery man.
According to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the attacker had "no criminal record" but had been flagged in 2006 as "possibly radicalized". The file was not "renewed in 2008". He "was not identified as a risk," said Cazeneuve following the attack.
