Friend of Paris knife attacker arrested in Strasbourg

PARIS –A friend of the Chechen-born man who carried out a deadly stabbing attack in Paris on Saturday night has been arrested in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, a source close to the inquiry said Sunday. 

The attacker, whom official sources have identified as Khamzat A., grew up with his family in Strasbourg, home to a large community of refugees from the Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya. 

Investigators have already taken in Khamzat's parents for questioning in Paris, where the family lives currently. 
Hundreds of Chechens have joined Islamic militant groups in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere in recent years, including Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and Iraq. 

In January 2015 Youssoup Nassoulkhanov, who also moved to France from Chechnya, emerged in an IS video from Syria praising jihadists who struck in Paris that month, including the massacre at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. 

Khamzat had been on France's main watchlists for suspected radicals since 2016. A source said he was questioned by anti-terror investigators last year "because he knew a man who was in contact with a person who had gone to Syria." 

A propaganda arm for the IS claimed responsibility for the knife attack in Paris, which left one man dead and four other people wounded. 

It was the latest in a series of apparent Islamist strikes in France that have killed some 245 people since 2015. 
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