MUSLIM RADICAL LOSES MINDERS LONG ENOUGH TO STAB FIVE IN PARIS

A 20-year-old Chechen man, who was officially listed as a dangerous radical Muslim and potential terror threat who must be kept under surveillance at all times, managed to escape his French minders long enough to launch a frenzied knife attack on a number of random victims in the centre of Paris yesterday (12th May), killing one, as he shouted "Allah Akbar." 

The attacker began stabbing passers-by at about 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT) on the rue Monsigny. Eyewitnesses described him as a young man with brown hair and a beard, dressed in black tracksuit trousers. The man tried to enter several bars and restaurants but was blocked by people inside. Police arrived at the scene within minutes. They first tried to stop the assailant with a stun-gun before shooting him dead.

An eyewitness, named as Gloria, told AFP news agency: "We didn't know what was going on, we were quickly moved inside the bar, I went outside and I saw a man lying on the floor." Jonathan, a waiter at a local restaurant, told AFP: "I saw him with a knife in his hand. He looked crazy." He said a woman the attacker had stabbed ran into into the restaurant bleeding. The assailant tried to follow her inside, but was fended off and finally fled.

Two of the wounded in the attack are in a serious condition but do not have life-threatening injuries. Later in the evening the IS group said it was behind the attack, in a brief statement posted on its news outlet.

I don't know about you, but apart from the "Allah Akbarring" this sounds like an average Saturday night out in one of our major "vibrantly diverse" Western cities.

Anyway, it seems that this as yet unnamed Chechen was quickly identified from his fingerprints, whereupon it was revealed that he was supposed to be under close surveillance by the French security services, possibly this guy:

"Police found no documentation on the attacker, but investigators identified him by his fingerprints, Europe One radio station reported on Sunday...The knife attacker was reportedly listed on Fiche S, an indicator used in France to flag individuals considered a threat to national security who should be kept under constant watch, sources close to the investigation told AFP.

He had no criminal record, however, judicial sources said. According to Europe One, the 20-year old was monitored for his connections in “radical Islamic circles.”BFMTV reports that he had specific, indirect links with “a person in Syria.”

While almost as good an idea as just deporting them, locking up people merely suspected of Islamic terrorist links is not possible in the present-day political climate of France, so the big questions to be answered in the following days are "How closely was the terrorist watched?" and "What caused his surveillance squad to lose track of him?" (My guess is that the undercover cop trailing him went for a piss or stopped to have a garlic sandwich.) 

It would also be interesting to know how much these surveillance squads cost, how many "potential terrorists" are on the Fiche S list, and whether the French government still thinks that bombing the Assad regime in Syria is a good idea, when they have such an excellent track record killing jihadi scum like this.