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                French Beheading Suspect Denies Jihad Motivation

   by Reuters

   The man being held in France under suspicion of beheading his boss and
   trying to blow up a chemicals plant has told investigators there was no
   religious motivation behind the attack, a source close to the inquiry
   said on Monday.

   The source said Yassin Salhi, 35, told investigators he was not a
   jihadist and repeated earlier statements that he committed the act
   outside the southeast city of Lyon on Friday after a row with his wife
   the day before and his boss a few days earlier.

   Salhi, who was arrested on the scene of the crime on Friday, can be
   held for a maximum 96 hours under French law before being charged or
   released.

   The severed head of his boss was found hanging on the fence of a site
   belonging to U.S-based gas and chemicals company Air Products, next to
   flags bearing professions of the Muslim faith.

   Examination of one of Salhi's phones revealed he had taken a picture of
   himself with the severed head before his arrest and sent the image to a
   number belonging to a French national last traced to the Islamic State
   stronghold of Raqqa in Syria.

   Friday's attack stirred new security fears in France less than six
   months after January's Islamist killings at a satirical weekly and
   Jewish foodstore in Paris.

   Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said the threat facing France, a member
   of the international coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq, has
   never been greater. A number of sites around the country have been put
   on maximum security.

   French authorities say Salhi frequented Islamic radicals and was filed
   between 2006 and 2008 as being at risk of becoming radicalized, but he
   had a clean criminal record and did not show signs of preparing any
   attacks.

   Local media cited witnesses to the instability of his character,
   including a former martial arts instructor who said the usually calm
   father-of-three was subject to such bursts of violence that fellow
   pupils refused to spar with him.

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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-french-beheading-suspect-denies-j
   ihad-motivation/2841614.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-french-beheading-suspect-denies-jihad-motivation/2841614.html