Frenchman who decapitated boss kills himself in jail
Salhi caught the attention of intelligence authorities in 2005 and 2006
This file photo taken on June 28, 2015 shows French police escorting Yassin Salhi (C), a man suspected of decapitating his boss in an attack on a gas factory, as they leave his flat in Saint-Priest. PHOTO: AFP
PARIS:
A Frenchman who killed his boss and pinned his severed head to a fence at an industrial gas factory has committed suicide in his jail cell, prison authorities said Wednesday.
Yassin Salhi, 35, hanged himself from the bars of his cell using his bedsheets on Tuesday night, according to authorities at Fleury-Merogis prison, in the southern suburbs of Paris.
Confession in French beheading attack as gruesome 'selfie' emerges
The driver and deliveryman carried out the grisly attack on employer Herve Cornara in Isere, southeastern France in June, displaying his boss's head outside the plant surrounded by religious flags.
He tried to blow up the facility but was arrested and remanded in custody.
Salhi had been placed in solitary confinement but was not considered a suicide risk. He had always disavowed any religious motive for his crime, but prosecutors were pressing charges of religion-related terrorism.
The married father-of-three was born in the eastern French town of Pontarlier, near the border with Switzerland, to a father of Algerian origin and a mother with a Moroccan background.
Salhi caught the attention of intelligence authorities in 2005 and 2006 because he was socialising with a group of people associated with radicalism, a source close to the case told AFP in June.
French prosecutor confirms IS link to factory beheading
Intelligence services investigated him for a few years thereafter, but did not renew their inquiry in 2008.
He popped up again on the intelligence services' radar in 2013 because he was associating with people suspected of links to radicalism. At the time he wore a beard and a traditional North African robe called a djellaba.
France is on high alert after a state of emergency was declared in the wake of last month's Paris attacks, when a group of extremists killed 130 people.
A terrorist plot was foiled last week in the French region of Orleans, southwest of Paris, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday, as the government prepared constitutional changes to enshrine emergency police powers.
A Frenchman who killed his boss and pinned his severed head to a fence at an industrial gas factory has committed suicide in his jail cell, prison authorities said Wednesday.
Yassin Salhi, 35, hanged himself from the bars of his cell using his bedsheets on Tuesday night, according to authorities at Fleury-Merogis prison, in the southern suburbs of Paris.
Confession in French beheading attack as gruesome 'selfie' emerges
The driver and deliveryman carried out the grisly attack on employer Herve Cornara in Isere, southeastern France in June, displaying his boss's head outside the plant surrounded by religious flags.
He tried to blow up the facility but was arrested and remanded in custody.
Salhi had been placed in solitary confinement but was not considered a suicide risk. He had always disavowed any religious motive for his crime, but prosecutors were pressing charges of religion-related terrorism.
The married father-of-three was born in the eastern French town of Pontarlier, near the border with Switzerland, to a father of Algerian origin and a mother with a Moroccan background.
Salhi caught the attention of intelligence authorities in 2005 and 2006 because he was socialising with a group of people associated with radicalism, a source close to the case told AFP in June.
French prosecutor confirms IS link to factory beheading
Intelligence services investigated him for a few years thereafter, but did not renew their inquiry in 2008.
He popped up again on the intelligence services' radar in 2013 because he was associating with people suspected of links to radicalism. At the time he wore a beard and a traditional North African robe called a djellaba.
France is on high alert after a state of emergency was declared in the wake of last month's Paris attacks, when a group of extremists killed 130 people.
A terrorist plot was foiled last week in the French region of Orleans, southwest of Paris, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday, as the government prepared constitutional changes to enshrine emergency police powers.