Man who stabbed French soldier ahead of Olympics taken to psychiatric hospital

The man who stabbed and wounded a French soldier patrolling Paris just days before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics has been taken to a psychiatric hospital, French prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The attack happened outside the Gare de l’Est station in eastern Paris on Monday.

The city has been under a high security alert before the start of the Summer Games on July 26.

The soldier was taken to hospital suffering from a shoulder blade injury, but was not in life-threatening condition, officials said after the attack.

A statement from the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office on Tuesday identified the attacker as 40-year-old Christian Ingondo, who was born in Congo.

Ingondo was released from custody on Tuesday morning and transferred to a psychiatric hospital under police supervision, the statement said.

Investigations into attempted murder and the suspect’s background are continuing, it added.

In 2018, Ingondo was under judicial investigation on murder charges, the prosecutor’s statement said.

Two years later, in 2020, the investigating judges dropped charges against him and ordered a mandatory admission to hospital.

Thousands of troops serve in the Sentinelle force for France’s domestic security, created to guard prominent French sites after a string of deadly Islamic State extremist attacks in 2015. Soldiers in the Sentinelle force have been targeted in the past.

Paris is deploying around 30,000 police officers each day for the Olympics, which run from July 26 to August 11, with a peak of 45,000 for the opening ceremony on the River Seine.

About 18,000 members of the military are also helping ensure security, with thousands of them staying in a huge camp erected on the edge of Paris.