The Tunisian migrant who killed three people at a French church last month had a picture on his phone of the man who beheaded a teacher two weeks earlier, anti-terror prosecutors said Friday.
In addition to the photograph of 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov — who killed Samuel Paty for having shown Prophet Mohammed cartoons to his class — investigators said they also found pictures linked to the Islamic State group on the phone of Brahim Aouissaoui, 21.
There was also an audio recording in which he calls France “a country of unbelievers”.
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Aouissaoui, who was shot and seriously wounded after the attack, is still in critical condition in hospital, the national anti-terror prosecution unit said.
France raised its attack alert to the highest level after Aouissaoui killed three people in Nice, two weeks after the murder of Paty in a Paris suburb, in the third alleged jihadist attack in a month.
In September, a man attacked people outside the former offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which originally published the cartoons.
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Aouissaoui had arrived in Europe from Tunisia in September, reaching France overland after crossing the Mediterranean to Italy.
Prosecutors also said a formal probe into “murder and attempted murder linked to a terrorist enterprise” against Aouissaoui had now been handed to investigating magistrates.