On home soil

Horror close to home

HE STRANGLED his employer in the back of a van, hacked off his head with a kitchen knife and attached it to the gates of the chemicals factory where he worked, next to two Islamic banners. Yassin Salhi, a French citizen, confessed this week to a grisly murder on June 26th, at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier near Lyon, that shook France. Four days later, the public prosecutor concluded that Mr Salhi had acted with a “terrorist motive”.

The French have become grimly accustomed to news of beheadings by jihadists in far-flung places. Last year a French mountain guide was decapitated in Algeria by a group linked to Islamic State (IS). But such a horror on French soil was a far greater shock. After displaying the severed head, Mr Salhi rammed his van, loaded with gas canisters, into the chemical plant, in what appeared to be a failed attempt at a suicide attack.

Although no group has claimed responsibility, the public prosecutor said that the aim was clearly to terrorise with “maximum publicity”. Mr Salhi sent two photos of the severed head, one of them a selfie, to a French convert in Syria,...

from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1JBjkK2