French stabbing suspect charged with attempted murder as injured toddlers remain hospitalized

French judges on Saturday handed preliminary charges of attempted murder to a man suspected of stabbing four young children and two adults in a French Alps park, an attack that reverberated across France and beyond.

The suspect, a 31-year-old Syrian refugee with permanent Swedish residency, has a three-year-old daughter living in Sweden, regional prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said. Witnesses told investigators that the suspect mentioned his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ during the attack Thursday targeting a playground in the lakeside town of Annecy.

The victims, who came from multiple countries, are no longer in life-threatening condition, the prosecutor said. The children, between 22 months and three years old, remain hospitalized.

Police detained the suspect in the lakeside park in the town of Annecy after bystanders — notably, a Catholic pilgrim who repeatedly swung at the attacker with his backpack — sought to deter him.

The suspected attacker, whose name was not released, was presented to investigating judges in Annecy on Saturday and given charges of attempted murder and armed resistance, Bonnet-Mathis said. He is in custody pending further investigation.

The suspect refused to talk to investigators, and was examined by a psychiatrist and other doctors who deemed him fit to face charges, the prosecutor said. She said that the motive remained unclear, but it didn’t appear to be terrorism-related.

Witnesses said they heard the attacker mention his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ, according to the prosecutor, who said he wore a cross and carried two Christian images with him at the time of the attack. He also had €480 in cash and a Swedish driver’s license, and had been sleeping in the common area of an Annecy apartment building.

He had traveled to Italy and Switzerland before coming to France last October, and French police are coordinating with colleagues in those countries to learn more about his trajectory, said Damien Delaby, director of the regional judicial police.

The child victims were two French two-year-old cousins, a boy and a girl, who were in the playground with their grandmother when the assailant appeared; a British three-year-old girl visiting Annecy with her parents; and a 22-month-old Dutch girl, according to the prosecutor.

French President Emmanuel Macron visited the victims and their families, first responders and witnesses Friday. Macron said doctors were “very confident” about the conditions of the two cousins, who were the most critically injured.

The wounded British girl “is awake, she’s watching television,” Macron added. A wounded Dutch girl also has improved and a critically injured adult — who was both knifed and wounded by a shot that police fired as they detained the suspected attacker — is regaining consciousness, Macron said.

The seriously injured adult was treated in Annecy. Portugal’s foreign ministry said he is Portuguese and “now out of danger.” He was wounded “trying to stop the attacker from fleeing from the police,” it said. The second injured adult was discharged from a hospital, his left elbow bandaged.

The pilgrim, Henri, a 24-year-old who is on a nine-month walking and hitchhiking tour of France’s cathedrals, said he’d been setting off to another abbey when the horror unfolded in front of him. The attacker slashed at him, but Henri held his ground and used a weighty backpack he was carrying to swing at the assailant.

Henri’s father said his son “told me that the Syrian was incoherent, saying lots of strange things in different languages, invoking his father, his mother, all the Gods.”

The suspect’s profile fueled renewed criticism from far-right and conservative politicians about French migration policies. But authorities noted that the suspect entered France legally, because he has permanent residency status in Sweden. Sweden and France are both members of the EU and Europe’s border-free travel zone.

He applied for asylum in France last year and was refused a few days before the attack, on the grounds that he had already won asylum in Sweden in 2013, the French interior minister said.

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