Five days after the attack in Strasbourg, another victim has succumbed to his injuries. The deceased is a Pole, as the Paris prosecutor confirmed on Sunday evening dpa request.
Thus, the number of fatalities of the attack increased to five. It was initially unclear whether the Pole was the man who had been declared brain-dead days before. The attack in the city center on Tuesday had also injured many people.
According to a report in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, the 36-year-old Pole from Katowice on the day of the attack is said to have prevented even worse things. The man living in Strasbourg for about 20 years had stood in front of a music club with several acquaintances to smoke a cigarette. When the men saw the shooter, they stood in his path and closed the door. Otherwise, there could have been an even greater bloodbath, as in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2015, the Warsaw newspaper noted, citing eyewitnesses.
The presumed assassin Chérif Chekatt was shot dead on Thursday after a two-day police search. His motive is still not clear. The terrorist militia Islamic State (IS) claimed the attack after the death of Chekatts for himself and designated him posthumously as one of their „soldiers“. French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner interpreted this as an „opportunist“ speech, which does not change anything.
It is known that the attacker has called witnesses „Allahu Akbar“ (Allah is great). In addition, a radicalization Chekatts noticed during a stay in prison, it was said by the authorities. Chekatt was listed in two anti-terrorist directories of the French government and monitored by the secret service.
Four temporarily arrested relatives of Chekatts have since been released from police custody, French media reported on Sunday, citing the Paris prosecutor. Accordingly, his parents and two brothers could not be blamed. In addition, the investigators had taken three other people from Chekatts environment in custody. Two of them were now also released, as the French news agency AFP reported, citing the prosecutor. One person remained in custody.
Hundreds of people died in Strasbourg on Sunday. The memorial ceremony took place in front of the huge Christmas fir tree on Kléber Square. It was organized by human rights organizations.
