French Soldier Stabbed in Paris Ahead of Olympics

Facts

• On Monday, a French soldier was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after being stabbed outside a train station in Paris just 11 days before the kick-off of the 2024 Summer Olympics.¹
• The suspect, 40-year-old Christian Ingondo, was transferred from custody to a psychiatric hospital on Tuesday. His background and motivations are currently being investigated, and was last in police custody in 2018 for murder charges.²
• The soldier was patrolling the Gare de l’Est train station as part of Operation Sentinel, France's counterterrorism program launched after the 2015 Paris attacks. 30K police and 18K military personnel are slated to help with security at the Olympics.³
• Police sources state that the alleged attacker reportedly shouted 'God is great' as he attacked the soldier, and later noted that his motivation was because the French military 'kills people' in the country of his birth, the Democratic Republic of Congo.⁴
• France had raised its national security alert system to its highest level after the Islamic State group (IS) attack on a concert hall in Moscow earlier this year.³
• Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu expressed his sympathy on social media for the injured soldier.⁵

Sources: ¹Associated Press, ²ABC News, ³NBC, ⁴The Telegraph and ⁵CNN.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by UnHerd. Terrorist groups, especially the Islamic State group, have made France a top target, with the memory of the 2015 attacks still fresh in the public's mind. Jihadist propaganda has since posed a threat at home, with teenagers as young as 16 being implicated in threats. It remains to be seen if the Olympics can pass without bloodshed in the face of such a large domestic threat to security posed by radical Islam and foreign interference.
• Narrative B, as provided by RFI. France and their security partners abroad have been working around the clock to ensure the Games run smoothly. The French government has already foiled a terrorist plot and has beefed up security measures considerably. While the security challenges the country faces are real, there is no reason to expect there to be a cataclysm approaching that of 2015.
• Nerd narrative, as provided by metaculus.com. There is a 25% chance that a terrorist act will occur in metropolitan France during the 2024 Summer Olympics, according to the Metaculus prediction community.