The mother of a radical Islamist who killed a young German-Filipino tourist and wounded two others near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday night expressed concern about her son’s behavior in late October, an anti-terrorism prosecutor said Sunday, AFP quoted him as saying.

Jean-Francois Ricard told a news conference that the mother of the 26-year-old French-Iranian man told police she was worried about her son, who was “withdrawing.”

Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, who came from a non-religious family, converted to Islam at the age of 18 and “became involved very quickly in the ideology of jihad”.

Classified as an Islamist radical, he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 for participating in the preparation of a terrorist act for a planned act of violence in 2016 in the La Défense business district west of Paris.

While in police custody as part of that investigation, he claimed to have “radicalized and self-de-radicalised”, according to the verdict obtained by AFP.

He “established contacts with people rooted in jihadist ideology,” but those contacts were not used to prepare attacks, Ricard said on Sunday.

But after “contact through social networks with (…) the future author of the murder of Samuel Pati” (a teacher killed in October 2020) and “the development of certain mental disorders”, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat ) “received an increase in obligations, which the person was subject to”, and in particular “treatment order”.

This trial ended on April 26, 2023, after which the special services took over the case.

In early October 2023, Arman Rajabpour-Miyandoab created an X (formerly Twitter) account that contained “numerous posts about Hamas, Gaza and Palestine in general,” according to the judge.

Before Saturday’s attack, he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group in a video posted on the account, in which he offered to “support jihadists operating in various areas.”

“Creating this X account and then worrying about the mother in the same month could raise questions about an act that was weeks in the making,” said a source close to the matter.

While the attacker and three members of his family or entourage were in custody on Sunday evening, investigators, in particular, are trying to establish the date of purchase of the weapon.

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