The French government claims that the attack in Paris is "Islamist terrorism”

Gerald Darmanin, the French minister of the interior, stated that the attack carried out this Friday in Paris next to the former headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is "an act of Islamist terrorism" and that the perpetrator is an 18-year-old citizen of Pakistan. 

Gerald Darmanin stated in an interview with Canal France 2 that "the alleged perpetrator" of the knife attack, in which two people were seriously injured, arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied foreign minor (MENA).

He was not previously identified as a terrorist element, but had a police record. The minister, who wanted to show some caution because his identity papers had not yet been found, explained that he had been arrested a month ago for carrying a weapon. Although he said he had no record of having justified his action, he stated that "it is an act of Islamist terrorism". He recalled in this respect that the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office has taken charge of the investigation and that his way of acting "is typical of Islamist terrorism".

The head of the public prosecutor's office, Jean-François Ricard, said in the middle of the afternoon that, in addition to this man, a second person had been arrested on suspicion of being linked to the first. According to press reports, the man is a 33-year-old Algerian national who was arrested at the Richard Lenoir metro station on line 5, near the site of the attack.

Charlie Hebdo magazine was already the target of an attack on 7 January 2015, in which twelve people died, including some of the magazine's cartoonists and the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. 

The trial for this attack began on 2 September and is scheduled to last until 10 November. On the occasion of this trial, the satirical magazine once again published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The terrorist organisation al-Qaeda saw this publication as another provocation and once again threatened the magazine in its propaganda medium 'Una Umma'. "If your freedom of expression does not respect any limits, prepare to face the freedom of our actions," the Jihadist group warned.